Apple

I’m porting a client for systems management, and one of the many values we display for PC clients is BIOS version information. I was looking to report the equivalent for the Mac.

I was hoping to be able to get the information without having to resort to a pipe/fork/exec, but it looks like if I use my existing code the values returned would be a bit unformatted (i.e. on a PPC the version data I grab is $0005.1.4f0, where clearly the $000 can be dropped).

I suppose relying on the system_profiler app to exist and be in the same location is about as brittle as expecting the Boot ROM information to be in a certain place in the IORegistry (different on two platforms at this point), but has the added advantage of being a common method to retrieve the info and touches it up for the user to view.

Thanks,

Dave

From: Shantonu Sen [mailto:email@hidden]
Sent: Saturday, July 15, 2006 7:01 AM
To: David Litwin
Cc: email@hidden
Subject: Re: Programatically determining BootROM version?

I have an IODeviceTree:/rom node on my Intel-based Mac with a "version" property.

What knowledge are you inferring from this, though? You may want to consider exec-ing system_profiler -xml to generate an information list of relevant features if you are planning on recording or displaying this to the user.

Shantonu

On Jul 13, 2006, at 2:19 PM, David Litwin wrote:

Sigh. I’m wrong. The new path needs to be used for the Intel machines.

I had structured the code to use a subroutine to try to find the path, and throw on failure. I would then catch (at a higher level) and try with the new path.

Apparently stepping over the subroutine threw, caught, and called the subroutine again with the new path and then hit the end of the ‘step’, so it looked exactly like the original path was found.

Sorry for the mis-information.

Dave

From: darwin-dev-bounces+david_litwin=email@hidden [mailto:darwin-dev-bounces+david_litwin=email@hidden] On Behalf Of David Litwin
Sent: Thursday, July 13, 2006 1:57 PM
To: email@hidden
Subject: RE: Re: Programatically determining BootROM version?

Hmmm… Apparently the old path works on the Intel machine even though the IORegistryExplorer doesn’t show that path available. Asking for “version” in the “:/rom” path works as well, perhaps the older method was preserved for compatibility?

David Litwin

BigFix

From: David Litwin
Sent: Thursday, July 13, 2006 11:15 AM
To: 'email@hidden'
Subject: Re: Programatically determining BootROM version?

This question was answered a few years back, but on an Intel Mac this path does not exist.

It seems like on Intel the path would be “:/rom”, with the key being “version”, as that data matches what System Profiler displays for its Boot ROM Version field on my Intel dev machine.

Is there any official information on how to get this (I couldn’t find much searching for it)? I can code things to look for the PPC path first, then fall back to the location I’ve found it on my Intel machine, but this is just what I’ve found poking around myself, and who knows if I can rely on this for all machines.

David Litwin

BigFix

Garth Cummings writes:

Take a look at the IODeviceTree plane, Root > rom@xxxxxxxx > boot-rom@xxxxxxxx. That node has the BootROM-version property.

You can create a matching dictionary for this using:

IORegistryEntryFromPath(kIOMasterPortDefault, kIODeviceTreePlane ":/rom/boot-rom");

HTH,

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References:
	>Re: Programatically determining BootROM version? (From: Shantonu Sen <email@hidden>)