# BIOS will be dead in three years



## lotuseclat79 (Sep 12, 2003)

BIOS will be dead in three years.

*It's the one major part of the PC that's still reminiscent of the PC's primordial, text-based beginnings, but the familiarly-clunky BIOS could soon be on its deathbed, according to MSI. The motherboard maker says it's now making a big shift towards point and click UEFI systems, and it's all going to kick off at the end of this year.*

Just say Sandy Bridge chipset (Intel) - a must-have for everyone!

-- Tom


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## loserOlimbs (Jun 19, 2004)

Not sure I like this, looks like junk!I will have to use to know for sure though. I really like modern BIOS though.


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## tomdkat (May 6, 2006)

According to this article, Intel-based Macs have been shipping with EFI since the beginning.

According to this article, machines with Intel Itanium chips have supported EFI since 2000. I don't know if ALL Itanium based systems support EFI or only certain ones.

Bring on the new technology! :up:

Peace...


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## namenotfound (Apr 30, 2005)

My computer doesn't even use BIOS, it uses EFI, so it doesn't bother me. BIOS sucks anyway!


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## loserOlimbs (Jun 19, 2004)

Why do BIOS suck? It has everything you need, is light and does exactly what it needs to. EFI seems like all marketing. "Look what we made pretty, now even your grandma will want to muck with system settings. Say Hello to regular visits to family who have fried mother boards by over volting everything"

I would rather keep it simple, and not uglify my BIOS to EFI. 

IMO at this point, EFI is another reason not to buy an Apple


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## namenotfound (Apr 30, 2005)

BIOS wastes time by showing you a bunch of code beforehand. EFI boots your operating system fast with no waiting in-between.
Also, if you dual boot, EFI shows you your options in a graphical way, BIOS show you your options with text.
Also, EFI has a cool target disk mode (not 100% sure if this is an EFI feature or just a Mac feature) when you hold the "T" key while booting.


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## loserOlimbs (Jun 19, 2004)

Multibooting is not a feature from the BIOS... its on the hard drive and a feature of the bootloader


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## Blackmirror (Dec 5, 2006)

Whats a bios .,lol


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## tomdkat (May 6, 2006)

loserOlimbs said:


> Multibooting is not a feature from the BIOS... its on the hard drive and a feature of the bootloader


"Target disk mode" isn't the same as "dual" or "multi" booting different operating systems. I believe "Target disk mode" allows you to boot from another physical disk, I think even connected to a different computer, provided they are connected with a Firewire cable. I'm going off the top of my head so I could be mistaken (I'll verify in a minute).

So, let's say you can't boot from your local hard drive in your Mac. With "target disk mode", you could boot from another hard drive attached to a different Mac that is physically connected to your Mac. This could be very different than booting from a bootable CD/DVD since you could potentially have access to more apps and tools to fix the broken Mac OS X installation than you could with a bootable utility CD/DVD.

EDIT: Ok, according to this article, I was mistaken.


> When a Mac that supports Target Disk Mode[1] is booted with the 'T' key held down, its operating system does not load. Instead, its firmware enables the computer's drives to behave as FireWire mass storage devices.
> 
> A Mac booted in Target Mode can be attached to the FireWire port of any other computer - Mac or PC - where it will appear as an external FireWire device. Hard drives within the target Mac, for example, can be formatted, partitioned, etc., exactly like any other external FireWire drive. Some computers[verification needed] will also make their internal CD/DVD drives and other peripheral hardware available to the host computer via FireWire.
> 
> Target Disk Mode is useful for accessing the contents of a Mac which cannot be booted from its own operating system. Target Disk Mode is the preferred form of old-computer to new-computer interconnect used by Apple's Migration Assistant.


Provided you can get this to work, it sounds far more convenient for data retrieval than opening up the case and physically removing hard drives. 

Peace...


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## namenotfound (Apr 30, 2005)

tomdkat said:


> Provided you can get this to work, it sounds far more convenient for data retrieval than opening up the case and physically removing hard drives.
> 
> Peace...


That is also why I love it! Plus, it's good for data transfer in general, like when I want to put a bunch of movies I have on my iMac to my MacBook Pro, I just connect my FireWire 800 cable, boot in Target Disk Mode, and transfer over 10GB in less than a minute! Something that would take hours over Wi-Fi networking or over USB. :up:


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## tomdkat (May 6, 2006)

namenotfound said:


> That is also why I love it! Plus, it's good for data transfer in general, like when I want to put a bunch of movies I have on my iMac to my MacBook Pro, I just connect my FireWire 800 cable, boot in Target Disk Mode, and transfer over 10GB in less than a minute! Something that would take hours over Wi-Fi networking or over USB. :up:


Interesting application of "target disk mode". Have you tried doing something like this to transfer files between a Windows box and your Mac? According to the Wikipedia article, "target disk mode" should work with Windows machines as well.

Peace...


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## namenotfound (Apr 30, 2005)

Yeah it works, but I dislike doing it because it just fills your Mac hard drive with the hidden Windows files (thumbs.db).

Although you can transfer files back and forth between Mac and Windows via target disk mode, the Mac is the one that has to be in Target Disk Mode. So if it's a Windows machine that you can't boot into, and you want to put it in target disk mode so you can retrieve the date via a Mac, you can't.


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## tomdkat (May 6, 2006)

namenotfound said:


> Yeah it works, but I dislike doing it because it just fills your Mac hard drive with the hidden Windows files (thumbs.db).


Gotcha.



> Although you can transfer files back and forth between Mac and Windows via target disk mode, the Mac is the one that has to be in Target Disk Mode. So if it's a Windows machine that you can't boot into, and you want to put it in target disk mode so you can retrieve the date via a Mac, you can't.


Yeah, I figured this would be the case but wondered if you had actually used this function to transfer data between your Mac and your Windows box. 

Thanks!

Peace...


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## JohnWill (Oct 19, 2002)

BIOS by another name.


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## tomdkat (May 6, 2006)

Well, if we're gonna go that route we'll have to call is "SuperBIOS" or something. 

Reading a bit more on EFI, it sounds really cool. It doesn't have some of the limitations of current/traditional BIOS-based system have.

Peace...


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## JohnWill (Oct 19, 2002)

It really is a BIOS by another name, it's still firmware on the MB that boots the O/S.


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## tomdkat (May 6, 2006)

I don't think it is. I think it's far more than a "BIOS", at least as we've come to know it. It's in firmware on the MB that boots the OS *and* does other stuff. The more I learn about it, the more I really dig it.

I mean the "Target Disk Mode" functionality Macs have is just one example.

Peace...


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## namenotfound (Apr 30, 2005)

This is why I said "BIOS sucks" in my other post.

I think EFI is awesome. If for nothing else, for the fact that it loads the OS faster than BIOS does.

When I boot Windows 7 on my iMac, it loads MUCH faster than when I boot Windows 7 on my Dell. Both having the same specs with regard to processor and RAM.


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## JohnWill (Oct 19, 2002)

Well, there's not much to the Mac O/S, so it would boot faster. 

Time to duck and run!


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## tomdkat (May 6, 2006)

JohnWill said:


> Well, there's not much to the Mac O/S, so it would boot faster.


LOL You crack me up. 

Peace...


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## namenotfound (Apr 30, 2005)

JohnWill said:


> Well, there's not much to the Mac O/S, so it would boot faster.
> 
> Time to duck and run!


    

Somewhat amusing :up:


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## JohnWill (Oct 19, 2002)

I'm not saying that UEFI is a bad thing, just that it's somewhat overblown as to it's impact. It really is just a fancy BIOS, you still have to load the O/S.


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## tomdkat (May 6, 2006)

Hence the "SuperBIOS" name I suggested above. 

Peace...


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## loserOlimbs (Jun 19, 2004)

tomdkat said:


> Hence the "SuperBIOS" name I suggested above.
> 
> Peace...


I still think the UI is a step backwards. It has the same problems at a glance as OSX and KDE, too many glitzy worthless things


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## tomdkat (May 6, 2006)

I think the added functionality far outweighs the GUI "issues" that might exist. Besides, it's not something most will ever spend time looking at AND if they do, I'm sure they will appreciate being able to navigate the UI using their mouse instead of figuring out which keys on the keyboard to press.

There's nothing wrong with OS X's or KDE's UIs (other than maybe KDE trying to be closer to Windows than not). OS X's UI is easy to use and looks sexy. If anything, Windows 7's new taskbar is a bit of a kludge but I digress...  LOL

Peace...


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## loserOlimbs (Jun 19, 2004)

Tom, as cool as the target disk mode sounds... I hate my mouse!


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## tomdkat (May 6, 2006)

That's cool.. just don't use it! 

I'm able to navigate Windows (XP at least) using my keyboard and no mouse and I imagine the UEFI GUI would support the same ability.

"Target disk mode" isn't one of the things that I like about EFI as much as GUID Partition Table (GPT) and a potentially standard interface for ALL PCs which support EFI. Lastly, it also looks like the EFI GUI is an optional interface and a text-oriented interface is also supported.

Overall, EFI appears to be functional, flexible, and extensible and these are good things. 

Peace...


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## loserOlimbs (Jun 19, 2004)

I am happy as long as it provides the old BIOS options, I can use my keyboard, and those bubbles aren't the only GUI elements my PC ships with to change boot device for example.


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## tomdkat (May 6, 2006)

I doubt the EFI would have the old BIOS options since it's a different animal. It would probably offer the same kinds of BIOS functions but in different options and with different names, etc. I wouldn't expect the non-graphical UI to look like the traditional BIOS UI we know.

Peace...


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## namenotfound (Apr 30, 2005)

This reminds me of a while ago when someone on here asked what my BIOS settings were, and I replied I don't have BIOS and they got all confused.  I forget who asked me...

Anyway, I say EFI FTW!


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## Frank4d (Sep 10, 2006)

Like arguing with VHDL designers whether the program that gets downloaded into an FPGA is "firmware" or "logicware".


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## tomdkat (May 6, 2006)

It's logicware, obviously....  LOL

Peace...


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## JohnWill (Oct 19, 2002)

The new partitioning will become important soon, the 3TB disks have arrived!


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