Back in the days of dos, there use to be a utility for Phoenix bios that you could use to make changes. It worked well with the various screen readers of the time. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Marcel Oats" <moats@xxxxxxxxxxxx> To: "Speakup is a screen review system for Linux." <speakup at braille.uwo.ca> Sent: Thursday, October 12, 2006 11:17 PM Subject: Re: ancient speech synthesizers > Most Mbs now have the BPB (bios parameter block) stored outside the > actual file that makes the bios. Normally, the bios file that you > can save, should be around 512 kb in size. If we're going to get > into a discussion on accessing bios technology, we might want to take > it off-list, but I believe you would still be faced with the issue of > different mb manufacturers using different formats. Indeed, Asus > (the maker of the board on all systems here accept for the server) > use a completely different bpb format to Gigabyte. > > Ideally, as mentioned earlier, it'd be a case of manufactures writing > a utility, or perhaps a third party writing the skeleton, and the > manufacturers writing templates to fit into the infrastructure. > > Marcel > At 11:21 Ay M 13/10/2006, you wrote: >>I seem to have a memory of some manufacturers stating in sales information >>that their MBs come with software to change bios settings from windows. I >>think it might have been Gigabyte. Doing some checking now, I can find a >>Gigabyte board that allows altering boot order without accessing BIOS >>directly (the board I am mentioning here can be found at www.dabs.com with >>quicklink 43rtws). Also the BIOS can be accessed from windows, and has >>been >>for a long time, my asus p4pe MB came with software that could save BIOS >>to >>a file, or flash BIOS from a file, from in windows, so an app wouldn't >>even >>need to work directly on the BIOS hardware if the file format was known >>(you would hope the manufacturer would know that). >> >>From >>Michael Whapples >> >>Farhan writes: >> >> > HI, i'm not sure if this applies to the current conversation >> here, but an interesting note. >> > Toshiba makes a bios utility for windows you can read everything >> with in the bios, change the boot order and all that. I'm not sure >> how you could actually program one of those for LInux, but maybe >> you could contact Toshiba and talk to thems. >> > On 10/12/2006 at 4:41 Gregory Nowak said >> > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- >> > Hash: SHA1 >> > >> > On Thu, Oct 12, 2006 at 07:21:04PM +1300, Marcel Oats wrote: >> >> The other think we could >> >> think about, are why companies such as Asus have not made a >> piece of windows >> >> software that is able to read the bios parameter block on their >> >> boards, and allow the user to change them, in a nice accessible >> >> interface. >> > >> > Why limit it to Asus, why not ask the same thing of all companies >> > producing motherboards and bios code? Actually, I think that if AMI >> > and Award were to include it in the base bios, the mb companies >> > probably wouldn't pull it out. >> > >> > \as for the why, I'm willing to bet that it's because they don't care, >> > because they think the RND would be too expensive, and probably >> > because these companies think the market for something like this is >> > too small. Granted, something like this wouldn't probably cost too >> > much to develop. While we're discussing things to think about, if such >> > a utility were developed, it would be nice to find it on the CD that >> > comes with the mb, instead of having to pay for yet another program, >> > because you have a disability, and most other people don't. Oh one >> > more thing, let's not limit it to windows, arguably, I think such a >> > utility would be easier to program as a gnu/linux text-based >> > application, though since I haven't done hardware driver programming >> > under gnu/linux, I could be wrong in my estimate of the difficulty >> > level. >> > >> > Greg >> > >> > >> > >> > - -- >> > web site: http://www.romuald.net.eu.org >> > gpg public key: http://www.romuald.net.eu.org/pubkey.asc >> > skype: gregn1 >> > (authorization required, add me to your contacts list first) >> > >> > - -- >> > Free domains: http://www.eu.org/ or mail dns-manager at EU.org >> > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- >> > Version: GnuPG v1.4.5 (GNU/Linux) >> > >> > iD8DBQFFLeuP7s9z/XlyUyARAjVAAKCASW/PEucGdZpscORSn3OW9mTMiQCgtvJs >> > IUjw10Vyr+pgVaPUAbQculk= >> > =hfcK >> > -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- >> > >> > _______________________________________________ >> > Speakup mailing list >> > Speakup at braille.uwo.ca >> > http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup >> > >> > >> > >> > >> >>_______________________________________________ >>Speakup mailing list >>Speakup at braille.uwo.ca >>http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup > > > _______________________________________________ > Speakup mailing list > Speakup at braille.uwo.ca > http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup
