Mac x86 Bios?

I hope the new BIOS will be flashable, so that we can flash something like OpenBIOS (www.openbios.info, OSS OpenFirmware for x86 PCs) into the Intel Macs.

From what I gather only USB will be bootable as BIOS must not support FireWire. I wonder what is next? Ditch FireWire for SATA? Actually that doesn't sound as bad. ;-)

Greg, It's not quite that bad. You can use BIOS to select the boot disk, and x86 BIOS supported passwords long before Apple even switched to Open firmware. There are ways to emulate many other Open Firmware functions on x86 boards, too. The question is what functionality will be implemented, how it will interract with the system, and whether it will be open.

I think I'll be alright so long as I never have to "flash my BIOS." I make fun of people who have to do stuff like that. That and it just sounds so vulgar and offensive!

Does that mean no holding down option to select the boot device? no target disk mode? no open firmware password? What the hell are they doing?!?! Those 3 features are what make a mac a COMPUTER, and a wintel a machine that runs an OS. Change is good, so is a speed bump, but not at the cost of features.

i just cant wait till the EMU's come out... the pear pc project will either die, or be completly reborn as the primere emu for osx...I CANT WAIT!!! custom bios or not, itll will only be a matter of time for the emus... and eventually china will pop out a few mobos that will run osx nativley... begun the zombie clone wars have.....

For el.tremendo: Intel's consumer segment contains the Pentium and Celeron lines. The Celeron is a cheaper Pentium that doesn't have the same features as a Pentium (usually cache or certain extenstions). The D stands for desktop, while M stands for mobile. The EE is the Pentium 4 Extreme Edition, and can be compared to Xeons in clockspeed and cache. The Xeon is one of Intel's server processor lines and the most common found of them. The other is Itanium, which has struggled. Itanium and Xeon are the only families which support multiple processors. However, Intel is working toward producing dual-core processors. It is unknown which lines will receive this treatment. As for the latest and greatest in x86 many believe AMD has it, but Intel has been getting stronger recently.

I'm at a loss for understanding Intel's product line. Can someone please point me to a breakdown (in plain English) of where each processor stands in their line? I've been to tomshardware and intel.com (of course), but that was little help because it was mostly just specs. They've got the M, Centrino, D(?) EE, etc. It's all foreign to me. Which is the latest and greatest in x86? What's a good guess on what Macs will be using? I use a dual Xeon box at work to do Monte Carlo modeling of radiation absortion in tissue (sweet!), but those chips won't be making it into Macs, right? As to the topic of this thread--BIOS, I've gotta say that this is one of the things that concerns me most. If Apple ends up with a BIOS like windows has, this will go a long way to shattering the "turn it on and it works" thing that Apple has been so good at. When my centrino lappy is firing up and I see the BIOS, it scares me a bit. Got my first II-plus in 83, or so, and I've been Apple ever since. I don't care what's inside, as long as it doesn't change my user experience.

This really worries me. What happens to many Mac centric functionalities that are supported in Open Firmware? Things like Firewire "Target" disc mode? What about booting from the CD by holding down the "C" key? What about Netbooting? What about the security offered through Open Firmware? What about all of the innumerable conveniences that are available as a result of Open Firmware. I would hope that Apple writes their own BIOS that supports many of these features.

Could be great for iBooks and PowerBooks. With a Pentium M battery life wouldn't be so short. I know after 3 hours I'm running a bit low on my 15" PowerBook.