Why are they doing this?
Could it be security related?
Old stuff could contain info Intel now recognizes as enabling to exploiters, researchers, et. Al.
Edit: I see that shot down elsewhere in the discussion.
Intel desktop board BIOS update end-of-life
131–140 of 163 posts
Re: Intel desktop board BIOS update end-of-life
#132Earlier quoted context omitted.
I never understood why AMD did not push that angle more, it is an act that would be very hard to follow by Intel unless they bought NVidia or something extreme like that. It also would allow AMD to potentially gain an edge over NVidia in the GPGPU space. Missed opportunity imo, it still seems like an excellent idea.
AMD's market cap (44B) is much smaller in terms of market cap than either nVidia (124B) or Intel (251B), and pre-Zen they bet on mulitcore more heavily which lead to a decade of non-ideal hardware. As a result AMD didn't really have the money to dump into software for drivers and developer experience. That said, they have been working on opening up the GPU space via ROCm: https://rocm.github.io
I find it hard to believe that a company with a market cap in billions can't afford, say, a dozen of developers to maintain its open source drivers.
Re: Intel desktop board BIOS update end-of-life
#133Earlier quoted context omitted.
Most of them in my experience. Many industrial machines have lifespans well beyond 15years. Big companies buy the state of the art and when they decide to replace the old machines they resell them to smaller companies who can't afford to buy the newest model. I know many people on HN work in web technologies where last year's technology is already obsolete but I've worked in small hardware companies that still used i…
Case in point: McLaren uses a special Compaq laptop from 1992 to service old F1's. Why? Well, the car was made in 1992, and so was the ECU. https://jalopnik.com/this-ancient-laptop-is-the-only-key-to-...
Back in my IT days we used a laptop that had a windows NT 4.0 sticker on it (running windows 2k) to run the ID printer that printed company IDs. These kinds of setups aren't that uncommon. At small scale it's easier and cheaper to keep old stuff running than to migrate.
Re: Intel desktop board BIOS update end-of-life
#134I can't believe this. All these years I've been recommending Intel products because of their long term support. I know these boards are legacy, but does it really cost them that much to host the files for occasional downloaders? One would have thought they'd tread carefully after so many recent PR hits, but I guess not.
I've built three systems with Intel desktop boards, and only one of them survived longer than three years; the other two succumbed to Bad Capacitor Syndrome. I wonder if the caps were counterfeits, since they were (at least ostensibly) from respected Japanese manufacturers. The survivor is a D945GCLF2 (Mini-ITX Atom board) that runs my Asterisk installation. Even it's a bit wonky, though; kernels newer than 2.6 have…
FYI there are still LGA1551 and AM4-based boards with PCI slots available, at least in mATX and ATX form factors. So you could potentially replace it with a modern board if you wanted.
https://pcpartpicker.com/products/motherboard/#xcx=0&d=1,6&s...
(although apparently not in mini-ITX, but there are still a few Atom boards with ITX and PCI non-E available)
https://pcpartpicker.com/products/motherboard/#xcx=0&d=1,6&s...
Re: Intel desktop board BIOS update end-of-life
#135Earlier quoted context omitted.
In some industries, that's not even medium-term.
what industries would these be?
SQLite: 2050
Re: Intel desktop board BIOS update end-of-life
#136Earlier quoted context omitted.
what industries would these be?
Manufacturing and scientific equipment like NMRs are two that come to mind.
Companies other than Intel are continuing to pursue irrelevance for industrial or high-stakes operations themselves.
Sometimes you've got to have a Bozo when a competitor or associated business has one or more Bozos in a decision-making position.
Just to be seen as competitive or up-to-date.
Apple and especially Microsoft made more money from anti-recycling after they pushed it into a position where the original superior engineering was not as lucratrive for the shareholders.
Users should be grateful since they were not squeezed more thoroughly even sooner.
The anti-user effect is just collateral damage.
Re: Intel desktop board BIOS update end-of-life
#137Earlier quoted context omitted.
OK I see that is for LGA1155 boards released 8 years ago, which isn't great but I'm not sure you need BIOS updates still.
Intel at least felt that you needed an BIOS update for it on 10/23/2018.
I'm running a DH87RL with the 2018 BIOS. It's pretty remarkable that they released those updates after 6 years of nothing, though they only changed the CPU microcode. With the number of CPU vulnerabilities being uncovered recently, they're probably deleting the BIOS files because they're tired of maintaining the microcode patches.
Re: Intel desktop board BIOS update end-of-life
#138Earlier quoted context omitted.
Storage is indeed cheap. Buying it through a service provider not so much.
Talking to my IT department, it seems the argument is that storage is only cheap in isolation. In the real world it aggregates across products, users and hierarchies. Example email: - I want bigger mailbox to handle bigger mails incoming and outgoing. Result: bigger mailbox. - Then everyone else in the company gets bigger mailboxes. Result: bigger mailbox x1000. - Also: bigger mail-server backups. - Also: bigger desk…
Only asking because the price is already being multiplied by 'users' further down: where do one get 100 GB for $0.1 for mailbox storage?
Re: Intel desktop board BIOS update end-of-life
#139Earlier quoted context omitted.
Case in point: McLaren uses a special Compaq laptop from 1992 to service old F1's. Why? Well, the car was made in 1992, and so was the ECU. https://jalopnik.com/this-ancient-laptop-is-the-only-key-to-...
Back in my IT days we used a laptop that had a windows NT 4.0 sticker on it (running windows 2k) to run the ID printer that printed company IDs. These kinds of setups aren't that uncommon. At small scale it's easier and cheaper to keep old stuff running than to migrate.
> At small scale it's easier and cheaper to keep old stuff running than to migrate.
Especially if the machine can be isolated from the internet (like a printer controller).
Re: Intel desktop board BIOS update end-of-life
#140Surely they have industrial contracts to support hardware? I'm surprised they've adopted this burn-bridges approach.