An IRC client in your motherboard

As a bit of a gag, I’ve made a graphical IRC Client that runs entirely in the UEFI preboot environment. It features completely overdone features such as TrueType fonts, a cursor, and GUI decorations.

I first started this project as I was getting a bit tired building a from-scratch GPS receiver, and wanted to make something relatively quick and lighthearted. As tends to happen, this took a fair bit longer than I anticipated at the outset!

A fair chunk of that time was spent on the visualisations in the post showing how scroll views are modelled and how they’re rendered to a static viewport. I really hope you enjoy them!

When I first began wanting to "stuff something in UEFI that really shouldn’t be in UEFI", my first instinct was a Twitter client. As it turns out, someone has already done a great job making this by using UEFI’s HTTP protocol! I therefore decided that whatever I made shouldn’t use HTTP at all, because that’s taken. I went with IRC since it sits on top of TCP and has the same social media feel that doesn’t belong anywhere near a preboot environment.

I understand that BIOS had limitations but I still think that UEFI is way too much.