list of systems not working with dellBiosUpdate

[Fabrice LORRAIN]

Michael E Brown a écrit :
> On Fri, Aug 17, 2007 at 07:57:16PM +0200, Fabrice LORRAIN wrote:
>> Hello,
>>
>> In [1] and [2], Matt Domsch and Michael E Brown respectively indicated 
>> that some Dell system might not be upgradable with current tools 
>> (libsmbios/dellBiosUpdate).
>>
>> I would suggest to put the list of those incompatible systems on 
>> http://linux.dell.com/wiki/ so us (the users) could get a clearer 
>> picture of what works or not.
> 
> I would dearly like to post such a list. As it happens, though, I dont
> have that list. :(  

This is where a wiki is handy. Update the list on the fly, following 
failure/success reports. Call for testing and reports.

> I work on the server team, and dont really do a lot
> of work with the myriad different desktops/laptops.

Yep, but your tool is as useful on the desktop side as on the server 
one. And from my side of the ocean, the nb of people using 
desktops/laptops are on a much much larger scale.
Having people from BIOS/desktop team give a hand might be useful.

> I can send a couple queries, though.
> 
> Note that there can be three reasons to cause a system to not work:

reasons which are interresting to document in a better place than 
list-archive, I think.

>   -- A system doesnt support RBU
Which means that those systems might work in the future, if a poor soul 
at Dell get some specs and motivation.

>   -- System supports RBU, but doesnt have BIOS in a format I can
>   extract (Opti 740 probably falls here right now).

means that those systems could be supported soon, it needs the BIOS team 
to provide the spec to exctract the hbr file or to provide the file 
directly.

>   -- System supports RBU, but RBU is buggy and doesnt work. Many old
>   systems fall under this. :(
Dead end, unsupported systems. Nice to know.

So to start such a list :
- Dimension 8250 + BIOS A02 = unsupported (3rd case)
- optiplex 740 = unsupported (2nd case)
- Dimension E521 = unsupported (1st case)

@+,
	Fab