PC Based Injection computer- Caution!

[Robert Harris]

On late model mother boards removing the BIOS KILLS DEAD the 
mother board - makes it forever a big time dead guy.  Do not even
think about becoming super-guru and replacing the factory BIOS.
 Buried in that BIOS is the power management control,
perpiphial control, bus logic etc etc etc.  In fact, virtually everything 
that used to take a jumper on the mother board is now controlled from
the BIOS. The last machine you could really write your own BIOS on
was probably the early 286's.   Whats the big deal.  After boot up 
and configure etc, all thats left of the BIOS is a couple of tables in 
memory.  Overwrite your own pointers there and the BIOS is gone forever
until next power cycle.   Hell, even Windows 95 totally replaces the
BIOS by assigning new pointers to it's own code.  If Bill Gates can
do it, why can't you.  Those pointers are documented in hundreds 
of geeky nerdy books (read by people like me) available at your 
local computer book store.

Side note.  There ain't no place to put your own ROM chip at any 
reasonable cost on any modern mother board.  But if you are cheap,
real nice and open minded enuff, think about your local friendly 
NE-2000 clone network board.  Fits an ISA slot - cost's about 20 to
30 bucks, got a socket for a ROM and PC BIOS already know how to
find it and add it to your system.  Just think - a no brainer.

Hell, if you are really nerdy, and willing to build on Bill Gates, you can 
even use it to communicate with other computers (Gasp - horrible thought-
you might develop on a PC and down load to this puppy effortlessly just by
buying some software - oh no Mr. Bill!!!!)

On to software and side issues about "Charactor".  A good engineer is lazy,
crafty, sly and "steals" a lot. Solve the problem should be the first
consideration
not how neat you can be.  If the solution is in the public domain - use it.
 When
STEAL is mentioned, it means don't re-invent the wheel - just because you
can.

MS-DOS and Windows have literally billions of dollars of software and
hardware
written and built to work with them.  I can for very few dollars buy real
time 
operating systems that co-exist or run under DOS and Windows just spiffy 
fine.  For under a hundred bucks, I can buy FFT processing library's that 
can make a Pentium blow the doors off any DSP.  Using Visual Basic, I can
put together a complete control system for an industrial plant in days -
not
years.  Point being - I'd rather use my Master Card and STEAL this stuff
than
go out and try to invent it.

Do not bother the factory guys - they ain't going to help anyway.  Once
upon
a time I asked a guy working at a company if he could get the basic cam 
number's on a 25 year out of production truck engine and if there were any 
other changes between the propane and gas version.  Understand, this data
was from when Moby Dick was a minnow and been published in factory spec
sheets, and other public domain sources thousands of times.  Just don't
have
the resources to pour thru every book in the autosection or buy back
issues.
Would have liked even a clue as to where to go to find it.  Nothing Nada -
not
even a f___ you bery much.  You ain't going to get squat from them, it
ain't
a matter of ethics or anything else - they just ain't going to do it so
don't bother
asking.  At least people on government stuff can and will discuss
unclassified
stuff with you.  Maybe less of a job fear factor at the CIA?

Robert Harris <bob at bobthecomputerguy.com>


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