x86asm.net

[MazeGen]

Discussion on UEFI Programming - First Steps article, written by vid.

[tomtobias]

first of all, THANK you vid, for an excellent introduction. I am so impressed by the high quality of this article. Excellent job.
I have no complaints. I am filled with admiration for your worthy accomplishment, and hope you continue the good work.
Here is an illustration of why I find this article meritorious:

[Guest]

I completely agree with your criticism of that FASM UEFI part. Originally it even wasn't in the article. It was added in final revision on MazeGen's request mainly as a somewhat unnatural "trick" to fit this article into aim of this site (x86asm.net), and partly a homage to my own effort with FASM EFI support and testing (I had my own reason for wanting FASM UEFI support, one that is not valid any longer though). For normal (non-asm-freaks) readers, this will probably remain just a weird curiousity at the end of article, easy to ignore I think. And since considerable part of this site's readers are asm-freaks, I bet they'll find this extra bit of info useful.

[tomtobias]

[Anonymous (Madis731)]

Hi, vid asked me to discuss here if I get my account enabled, I will be back.

[Madis731]

http://www.intel.com/products/desktop/motherboard/index.htm?iid=desk_nav+board
What I'm going to tell you will upset some or make other just say: "Ah-ha!", but i7 was designed to conquer the world (everybody agrees) and the only board supporting it from Intel is DX58SO, which incorporates everything a man can imagine. This doesn't surprise anyone, because when a company has a single motherboard for a CPU, then you don't have a choice and therefore you need to have everything inside it.

DX58SO is an Extreme Series motherboard and has a price tag. You expect it to act as appropriate. In fact that is what it does - it works. It has got RAID0,1,5, the AMT, UEFI, manual CPU, RAM, PCI-E-bus configurations. You can clock and tweak about 30 different aspects.

There was a discussion with vid that there might be some "cutting corners" going on with other "lower class" motherboards and I do believe that. For example adding a Matrix storage to a specific board doesn't cost anything, but they have deliberately left it out so any Classic Series board will spit on your Matrix installation. Actually Essential Series is even lower and also logically doesn't have Matrix.

What do work on each Intel board from at least 900-series are USB storage devices. I've booted countless USB flash drives from 16MB upto 16GB. If I leave it on 'Auto' and format it as 1.38MB FAT12 then MenuetOS has no problem booting from USB.
In fact Intel has USB2.0 implemented on the BIOS level so they are incredibly fast as well. It can detect a floppy, an optical drive or a HDD-configuration from the USB. Whichever it is formatted in.

When it comes to UEFI, its still taking baby-steps (I wonder why does it take that long) and they (Intel) seem to have made a good BIOS for at least the X58 chip and it has all the good of USB2.0 and FAT32. It can boot my USB flash drive and run UEFI diagnostic applications and the 'Hello world' app by vid.

I haven't touched any other board with UEFI support yet, but I've got some configurations at home, that I can test with. There's a 3- or 4-Series Intel mobo, then there's an old 975XBX2 (which isn't listed on Intel's site, but it was an 'Extreme' class of boards) and some laptops, which I don't dare to say have ever heard of a term *EFI.

I will come back to you because its a long weekend from today (around ~14:00 that is) and I can take my time with this. What I am afraid of is that UEFI will be quietly supported only on boards that also have Matrix Storage technology so you need to look Media series and up. But because of that parallel, there may be a positive side also You can easily identify a UEFI board

EDIT:
DG45ID also works: http://support.intel.com/Products/Desktop/Motherboards/DG45ID/DG45ID-overview.htm
DP35DP doesn't work: http://support.intel.com/products/desktop/motherboards/dp35dp/dp35dp-overview.htm
(DPP3510J.86A.0484.2008.0805.2031 &&
DPP3510J.86A.0517.2009.0107.2203 BIOSs tested
with 2GB FAT32-formatted (UEFI bootable in the correct folder) Kingston USB drive
UEFI Boot [Enabled]; USB ports+legacy [Enabled]; Boot USB devices First [Enabled]
Kingston set as the primary boot device.)

[vid_]

so it looks like 3x boards don't have UEFI USB support

[Jack]

Is it possible to add the UEFI application, build using EFI application toolkit in to the EFI shell as an internal command.

[vid]

I suppose you'd have to build your own shell, but I am not really sure.

[econnaatmof]

I consider, that you are not right. I am assured. I can defend the position. Write to me in PM, we will talk.

[econnaatmof]

[vid]

As long as you are not registered on the board, and post only as a guest, I can't PM you.