First two things that come to my mind are limitations of OS when it comes to memory address space and need to easily display documentation.
The weird Hewlett Packard FreeDOS option
91–100 of 156 posts
Re: The weird Hewlett Packard FreeDOS option
#92Earlier quoted context omitted.
> modern x86 processors can’t boot into BIOS mode anymore This is false. They still can and happily will. Issue is more about vendor not shipping a CSM image. A modern x86 processor will happily run real DOS just fine.
You might get this all the time, but I saw your username and thought no way that's the old palm guy. But I clicked on your profile, and you are the old palm guy! I used your apps back when I had a Tungsten T5, and Treo 680. :)
Re: The weird Hewlett Packard FreeDOS option
#93What gets me is... what's the point ? If you don't want to fight MS about selling PCs with no OS, ship some Linux distro. DOS was a nice option when you needed to support bare-metal stuff like flashing the BIOS without a modern OS getting in the way, but I would be shocked if that worked here - basically, I can see reasons to ship DOS, but they're all mutually incompatible with a virtual machine. And if you're going…
It seems pretty obvious to me. There were issues getting the old FreeDOS image to run on some of the new hardware. Someone was tasked by their manager with fixing it. They said fuck it and just did this because it was easier/faster than trying to troubleshoot DOS on modern hardware. They showed it to their manager and their manager saw FreeDOS boot and was happy. Until now no one ever noticed because FreeDOS is just the "I'm going to pirate windows option".
Re: The weird Hewlett Packard FreeDOS option
#94Earlier quoted context omitted.
Shipping your PC with "some linux distro" means you have to support that linux distro. Selling it with freedos, you only have to support freedos, and people who buy that option will install something else anyway.
> Shipping your PC with "some linux distro" means you have to support that linux distro. But they do offer to ship with a Linux distro, even apart from this strange frankensystem option. Did you miss where straight Ubuntu is a pre-install option?
According to another commenter some laptops don't have Ubuntu as an option (likely due to some sort of driver issues).
Re: The weird Hewlett Packard FreeDOS option
#95Earlier quoted context omitted.
I occasionally wonder what an operating system running below ring 0 would be used for. I haven't thought of anything compelling, apart from being a backdoor.
The SIM card in your mobile telephone is doing that right now. You are correct - it is basically used as a back door.
Usually when I hear people talk about backdooring it's usually on the network stack. On a phone that would be a modem.
Most devices, even in your computer (eg: laptop battery) run an OS. There's a good talk somewhere on how we've lost our way with OS design and now need to write an OS that looks at a single machine as a distributed system.
Re: The weird Hewlett Packard FreeDOS option
#96Earlier quoted context omitted.
You might get this all the time, but I saw your username and thought no way that's the old palm guy. But I clicked on your profile, and you are the old palm guy! I used your apps back when I had a Tungsten T5, and Treo 680. :)
http://dmitry.gr/?r=05.Projects&proj=27.%20rePalm :)
This is the most incredible thing I've ever read. I'm astounded at the level of work you've put into this.
Re: The weird Hewlett Packard FreeDOS option
#97Earlier quoted context omitted.
Shipping your PC with "some linux distro" means you have to support that linux distro. Selling it with freedos, you only have to support freedos, and people who buy that option will install something else anyway.
> Shipping your PC with "some linux distro" means you have to support that linux distro. But they do offer to ship with a Linux distro, even apart from this strange frankensystem option. Did you miss where straight Ubuntu is a pre-install option?
Yes and they charge for that, so that's consistent with what the parent comment said.
Re: The weird Hewlett Packard FreeDOS option
#98Earlier quoted context omitted.
I occasionally wonder what an operating system running below ring 0 would be used for. I haven't thought of anything compelling, apart from being a backdoor.
The SIM card in your mobile telephone is doing that right now. You are correct - it is basically used as a back door.
And the radio baseband firmware, what the hell is going on in there is likely known only to Qualcomm and the nsa.
Re: The weird Hewlett Packard FreeDOS option
#99Earlier quoted context omitted.
The SIM card in your mobile telephone is doing that right now. You are correct - it is basically used as a back door.
Usually when I hear people talk about backdooring it's usually on the network stack. On a phone that would be a modem. Most devices, even in your computer (eg: laptop battery) run an OS. There's a good talk somewhere on how we've lost our way with OS design and now need to write an OS that looks at a single machine as a distributed system.
Some batteries have an entire stm32 series microcontroller in them, I've seen battery controllers that are actually the same "CPU" as on a discrete single motor quadcopter ESC.
Re: The weird Hewlett Packard FreeDOS option
#100Earlier quoted context omitted.
Usually when I hear people talk about backdooring it's usually on the network stack. On a phone that would be a modem. Most devices, even in your computer (eg: laptop battery) run an OS. There's a good talk somewhere on how we've lost our way with OS design and now need to write an OS that looks at a single machine as a distributed system.
Some batteries have an entire stm32 series microcontroller in them, I've seen battery controllers that are actually the same "CPU" as on a discrete single motor quadcopter ESC.
Apple's laptop batteries in 2008 MacBook models have an independent microcontroller in them, which enables apple to manage it at a much more advanced level.
That generation of laptops can detect a problem with the battery much earlier (e.g. It can warn the user a year before the battery starts to swell. Been there, seen that). This knowledge is the basis of apple's battery technology that we see on their mobiles (iOS and macOS) today.
IIRC the password on these things were set to a default one and a PoC exploit was written for that platform.