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Find BIOS vendor/version/date and Machine serial/model?

Posted: Thu Feb 14, 2008 6:52 pm
by junkoi
I am writing a small kernel for x86, in which I want to find out some system information:

- BIOS information, such as vendor/date/version: Is it available somewhere in BIOS memory? Or is there any BIOS interrupt returning that information?

- Machine model/serial: I want to show that for example this machine is "Fujitsu Lifebook S2210". Same question: can I get it from somewhere in BIOS memory, or Bios interrupts?

Lots of thanks.
J

Posted: Thu Feb 14, 2008 8:46 pm
by t0xic
The BIOS Date is located at 0xFFFF:0x0005 (0x000FFFF5). It is in the mm/dd/yy format. I have tested this on bochs and a laptop and it works =)

linky

--Michael

Posted: Thu Feb 14, 2008 9:08 pm
by Jef
some other bios informations are not at the same address for all bios.

Re: Find BIOS vendor/version/date and Machine serial/model?

Posted: Fri Feb 15, 2008 4:21 am
by jal
junkoi wrote:I am writing a small kernel for x86, in which I want to find out some system information:

- BIOS information, such as vendor/date/version: Is it available somewhere in BIOS memory? Or is there any BIOS interrupt returning that information?

- Machine model/serial: I want to show that for example this machine is "Fujitsu Lifebook S2210". Same question: can I get it from somewhere in BIOS memory, or Bios interrupts?
From the FAQ of Ralf Brown's interrupt list:
Ralf Brown wrote:Q1: Is there an interrupt to get the BIOS serial number as shown on the power-up screen?

A: (Ralf Brown)
There is no general way to get the serial number. In most cases, you
need to know the proper offset in the BIOS image for that particular
make, model, and revision of the BIOS (and that offset may not even
be present in the real-mode image loaded into shadow RAM!).

Further, with a flashable BIOS, it is quite likely that every single
machine that has been updated with a downloadable upgrade from the
Web will have identical serial numbers, assuming they weren't already
identical as shipped from the factory with the original BIOS version.
Because of this, the BIOS serial number is essentially useless for
any identification purposes."
Here's some code that may help you finding strings in the BIOS, but not the serial number per se.


JAL

Re: Find BIOS vendor/version/date and Machine serial/model?

Posted: Fri Feb 15, 2008 6:31 am
by Brendan
Hi,
junkoi wrote:I am writing a small kernel for x86, in which I want to find out some system information:

- BIOS information, such as vendor/date/version: Is it available somewhere in BIOS memory? Or is there any BIOS interrupt returning that information?

- Machine model/serial: I want to show that for example this machine is "Fujitsu Lifebook S2210". Same question: can I get it from somewhere in BIOS memory, or Bios interrupts?
You want the DMI and/or SMBIOS specification/s from the Distributed Management Task Force. That will give you most of what you want...


Cheers,

Brendan

Re: Find BIOS vendor/version/date and Machine serial/model?

Posted: Mon Feb 18, 2008 3:40 am
by junkoi
Brendan wrote:Hi,
junkoi wrote:I am writing a small kernel for x86, in which I want to find out some system information:

- BIOS information, such as vendor/date/version: Is it available somewhere in BIOS memory? Or is there any BIOS interrupt returning that information?

- Machine model/serial: I want to show that for example this machine is "Fujitsu Lifebook S2210". Same question: can I get it from somewhere in BIOS memory, or Bios interrupts?
You want the DMI and/or SMBIOS specification/s from the Distributed Management Task Force. That will give you most of what you want...
This is what I am looking for. Thank you a lot!!!

J