Re: Damned BIOS

From	Johny B Good <johnny-b-good@invalid.ntlworld.com>
Newsgroups	comp.misc
Subject	Re: Damned BIOS
Message-ID	<ashb0atgp7gartmen1v2fkcgha9i2pcbai@4ax.com> (permalink)
References	<c6l1gcFfn34U1@mid.individual.net> <lu3tpd$r7d$1@dont-email.me> <c6lhfuFjpeiU1@mid.individual.net>
Organization	virginmedia.com
Date	2014-09-02 15:39 +0100

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On Tue, 02 Sep 2014 19:38:04 +1000, Sylvia Else
<sylvia@not.at.this.address> wrote:

>On 2/09/2014 6:06 PM, Rich wrote:
>> Sylvia Else <sylvia@not.at.this.address> wrote:
>>> When I say boot from device X, I mean do that. If it won't work, say
>>> so.  I don't mean "Have a fair go at X, and if it won't work, then
>>> see if you can find some other OS lying around and boot that
>>> instead."
>>
>> Keep in mind, the code about which you complain is from the same
>> authors who created this error message from years ago:
>>
>>    Keyboard not found - press F1 key to continue
>>
>> http://www.jobless-jack.com/2013/07/da-fuck-o-keyboard-not-found.html
>>
>> Such stupidity does not inspire confidence in their ability to
>> determine even a mildly good way to do things,
>
>It did rather encourage hot-plugging the keyboard, which you weren't 
>strictly speaking meant to do (though I've done it many many times. 
>Ditto monitors and non-USB mouses).
>

 In _all_ my experience of hot plugging PS/2 keyboards and mice, the
impied "Danger" of electrical damage is virtually non existent. The
advice is not so much as to reduce the risk of damage as to indicate
that the detection and configuration of those devices is a one shot
deal during the POST.

 If it's not present during the POST, it doesn't exist as far as the
BIOS is concerned, _ever_! With DOS based OSen which rely on the BIOS
for access to these devices, this situation remains immutable even
after the OS boots (MSDOS, win95, win98 and winME for example). I may
be wrong, but I think NT and *nix based OSen can reinitialise the PS/2
ports and detect such post POST hot plugged devices.

>Hard to know for sure what the thinking was. The original BIOS approach 
>of looking for something bootable probably made sense back when naive 
>users were expected to install their own OS. It meant the floppy drive 
>could be the first boot device, so as to allow installation if it 
>happened to contain a bootable disk.

 You're hearking back to simpler times before USB storage and a
plethora of workaround solutions to bootability appeared on the scene
to confound the process with a confusing array of hot pluggable USB
boot media choices. _THAT's_ the _REAL_ problem here. :-(

>
>I'm invoking a boot-override option. I suspect it's just adding the 
>chosen device in front of the existing list, with no one having given 
>thought to the ramifications of that when the chosen device proves 
>unbootable.

 Ah, the transient nature of bootable USB media! All the evidence so
far suggests the manufacturers are having a hard time on agreeing how
to handle the rather chaotic complexity introduced by bootable USB
storage devices. It seems they've not yet come to any amicable
agreement on this knotty problem (at least not to any extent that
would conviince the end users that there is any consistency to the
boot options logic).
>
>But it's annoying. I ended up unplugging the other devices. Let it try 
>to boot from them now!
>

 That's about the only way of standing any chance of getting it to
boot from the USB attached device of your choosing[1], provided the
boot options don't rely on the wanted USB device having to be present
at the time you configured it so it can be referenced by its unique
name (which, often times, it will promptly forget if the device in
question is ever replaced with another (or just unplugged during the
next boot) and then re-attached).

 There's also the additional problem regarding bootable USB storage
and that is how it presents itself, either as a large FDD or as a HDD
(or, indeed, something else entirely different again - I'm not fully
up to date with the various shenanigens of USB mass storage
standards).

 I do know that a usb pen drive can present itself as just a giant FDD
or else as a HDD. The last lot of USB pen drives I bought (3 x 8GB
Sandisk Cruzers on a card), in stark contrast to every other USB pen
drive I own, now shows its capacity and free space, just like a hard
drive, in the status line in explorer[2] whenever the drive icon is
clicked on.

 This is radically unlike the rest of my usb pen drive collection
where I need to right click and select properties before I can
ascertain this information. I suspect it's this change that prevents
me from using them as bootable pen drives for linux installers and so
on using the usual USB bootable image creation tools.

[1] If you find yourself having to go to that extreme, a better option
would be to familiarise yourself with the hotkey used to select the
boot device selection menu.

[2] For the benefit of our younger readers, this is a line of status
information shown at the bottom of the explorer window that is used to
provide _useful_ supplementary information that's totally lacking in
Vista and win7 versions.

 Don't bother arguing that there's no need because when you hover the
mouse over a drive icon, this info eventually pops up anyway. What I'm
really really pissed off about this useless status line is that it
simply won't show the total number of objects and file data in a
folder window as is the case for win2k and XP.

 The only way to get this sort of info in Vista and Win7 folder
windows is to _manually_ select everything (CTRL A or drag the mouse
pointer to create a selection box). Even then I'm not sure if this
works (I don't have any systems cursed with Vista or win7 at hand to
test this right now).
-- 
J B Good

Thread

Damned BIOS Sylvia Else <sylvia@not.at.this.address> - 2014-09-02 15:05 +1000
  Re: Damned BIOS Rich <rich@example.invalid> - 2014-09-02 08:06 +0000
    Re: Damned BIOS Sylvia Else <sylvia@not.at.this.address> - 2014-09-02 19:38 +1000
      Re: Damned BIOS Rich <rich@example.invalid> - 2014-09-02 12:06 +0000
        Re: Damned BIOS Sylvia Else <sylvia@not.at.this.address> - 2014-09-03 12:15 +1000
      Re: Damned BIOS Johny B Good <johnny-b-good@invalid.ntlworld.com> - 2014-09-02 15:39 +0100
        Re: Damned BIOS Sylvia Else <sylvia@not.at.this.address> - 2014-09-03 12:22 +1000
          Re: Damned BIOS Scion <a.b@nospam.invalid> - 2014-09-10 10:16 +0000
            Re: Damned BIOS Sylvia Else <sylvia@not.at.this.address> - 2014-09-14 15:27 +1000
              Re: Damned BIOS Johny B Good <johnny-b-good@invalid.ntlworld.com> - 2014-09-14 14:25 +0100
    Re: Damned BIOS RS Wood <rsw@therandymon.com> - 2014-09-02 18:19 +0000
      Re: Damned BIOS polygonum <rmoudndgers@vrod.co.uk> - 2014-09-02 19:52 +0100
        Re: Damned BIOS Bob Eager <news0002@eager.cx> - 2014-09-02 19:41 +0000
          Re: Damned BIOS polygonum <rmoudndgers@vrod.co.uk> - 2014-09-02 21:12 +0100
            Re: Damned BIOS Bob Eager <news0002@eager.cx> - 2014-09-02 21:00 +0000
              Re: Damned BIOS polygonum <rmoudndgers@vrod.co.uk> - 2014-09-02 22:08 +0100
              Re: Damned BIOS Rich <rich@example.invalid> - 2014-09-02 21:14 +0000
              Re: Damned BIOS Will Honea <whonea@whonea.net> - 2014-09-02 23:10 -0600
                Re: Damned BIOS Bob Eager <news0002@eager.cx> - 2014-09-03 05:58 +0000
              Re: Damned BIOS Paul Sture <nospam@sture.ch> - 2014-09-14 08:26 +0200
      Re: Damned BIOS Rich <rich@example.invalid> - 2014-09-02 21:09 +0000
  Re: Damned BIOS Johny B Good <johnny-b-good@invalid.ntlworld.com> - 2014-09-02 14:29 +0100
    Re: Damned BIOS Paul Sture <nospam@sture.ch> - 2014-09-02 16:35 +0200
      Re: Damned BIOS Scion <a.b@nospam.invalid> - 2014-09-10 10:18 +0000
        Re: Damned BIOS Paul Sture <nospam@sture.ch> - 2014-09-10 13:46 +0200
          Re: Damned BIOS Bob Eager <news0002@eager.cx> - 2014-09-10 13:00 +0000
            Re: Damned BIOS Paul Sture <nospam@sture.ch> - 2014-09-10 19:28 +0200
              Re: Damned BIOS Bob Eager <news0002@eager.cx> - 2014-09-10 19:11 +0000
                Re: Damned BIOS Paul Sture <nospam@sture.ch> - 2014-09-14 08:44 +0200
                Re: Damned BIOS Bob Eager <news0002@eager.cx> - 2014-09-14 07:17 +0000
              Re: Damned BIOS Paul Sture <nospam@sture.ch> - 2014-09-14 08:33 +0200
        Re: Damned BIOS Johny B Good <johnny-b-good@invalid.ntlworld.com> - 2014-09-10 13:53 +0100
          Re: Damned BIOS Paul Sture <nospam@sture.ch> - 2014-09-14 08:30 +0200

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