Coreboot-Based Dasharo Firmware Updated For MSI Z690/Z790 Motherboards

[cj.wijtmans]

Less binary blobs is better than more binary blobs. A system built around Dasharo is cheaper than a Talos II or a D16 system.

yes its nice to have when its easy to make the switch. But to me that means the system is still tainted because you still cant verify all the code running on your device.

[andyprough]

coreboot still runs unkown binary blobs so whats the point.

You are right, there is no point in gaining an ever greater amount of control over an ever greater amount of firmware and deep level processes. We should all just purchase Macbooks or Surface tablets and be satisfied that Apple or Microsoft benevolently allow us to power on our machines at all.

[zir_blazer]

coreboot still runs unkown binary blobs so whats the point.

I never understood the fetish that some people have with unknown binary blobs if you're already running a black box of billions of unknown transistors. Whats the point in using a computer at all?


Coreboot gives you more potential control of the Firmware by being able to customize it and implement features that would be pretty much impossible with propietary stuff with no access to the source. Nothing more fun that having to get your pirated copy of AMIBCP / MMTOOL so that you can unhide options that your Motherboard vendor though that you may not need, or playing around with even more tools to remove/add custom modules like this: https://github.com/xCuri0/ReBarUEFI/...ing-FFS-module
So I suppose that people like you was never in a situation where you thought that BIOS modding would solve any kind of problem.

[cj.wijtmans]

I never understood the fetish that some people have with unknown binary blobs if you're already running a black box of billions of unknown transistors.

because you cant verify the blob, unless its reverse engineered, at which point you might as well remove the binary blob. What is so hard to understand? Secondly transistors on their own dont really do anything so i think the point you are trying to make is a bit dumb.

[zir_blazer]

because you cant verify the blob, unless its reverse engineered, at which point you might as well remove the binary blob. What is so hard to understand? Secondly transistors on their own dont really do anything so i think the point you are trying to make is a bit dumb.

And you can't verify the Processor or any other chip. Transistors on their own can form internal ROM memory with more blobs that you usually have no external access to, like Microcode ROMs before they became runtime patcheable by the time of the Pentium Pro. Just because you don't "see" binary blobs doesn't means that they don't exist. Is like the libre community only care about binary blobs when they are distributed as files, completely ignoring that we don't know what is going on inside the chips themselves.

You can have full fledge easter eggs hidden on some:

https://www.cpu-world.com/CPUs/MP6/index.html

https://www.cpu-world.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=10738

Imagine a mole inside the design team weaponizing something like this...

How about formally undocumented instructions that allows the Processor to do things that normally it can't, with documentation only supplied to privileged developers (AKA Microsoft):

https://www.pcjs.org/documents/manuals/intel/80286/loadall/

Or even a completely hidden mode, like VIA C3 Alternate Instruction Set that allows you to bypass the Memory Protection Rings, allowing a Ring 3 application scale to Ring 0:
ttps://github.com/xoreaxeaxeax/rosenbridge

AMD also had MSRs that when written to with magic values enabled further MSRs formally non-existent:
https://web.archive.org/web/20110211...MD_processors_!

Seriously, if you care about blobs because you can't verify them, don't use a computer. It is worse than blobs, cause you can potentially reverse engineer a blob via Software. This is what it takes to reverse engineer Hardware:

https://caps0ff.blogspot.com/2020/11/the-elusive-tms32010-mask-rom.html

So reverse engineering a modern Processor is not happening anytime soon.


Truth is, I don't care about having binary blobs supplied by the same vendor that is already providing the silicon that you use because the Hardware has been a HUGE BLACK BOX that has been completely ignored since its inception, and blobs doesn't really make that problem worse. Using old hardware like those old Bulldozer/Piledriver Opterons that doesn't need binary blobs doesn't fix this problem.