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Intel desktop board BIOS update end-of-life
- bencollier49 7y agoI almost wonder if archive.org could get involved here, as these sorts of things (specifically including graphics drivers) will be a prerequisite for some forms of digital preservation and retrocomputing.
- zozbot234 7y agoSee https://www.archiveteam.org https://www.archiveteam.org - they've done such things before, and they do post their work to the IA. And yes, this is something where they should be involved.
- sp332 7y agoThere's a complete copy as of 5 years ago https://archive.org/details/2014.01.download.intel.com https://archive.org/details/2014.01.download.intel.com and an employee said on Twitter that they're working on another now. https://twitter.com/textfiles/status/1196440682401058816 https://twitter.com/textfiles/status/1196440682401058816
- gjvnq 7y agoSounds like it is time to call on r/DataHoarders
- bantunes 7y agoThey've already done it https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/d6dkoi/intel_removing_unknown_amount_of_drivers_and/ https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/d6dkoi/intel_r...
- est31 7y agoInteresting observation: > Note that they are actively removing files, they removed near 200 between the time I scraped the links and the time I started the downloads... shits going fast.
- randunel 7y ago> It seems Intel wants to wipe out their entire desktop board support section from their website. If this is true, it's the perfect opportunity to create dodgy "DOWLOAD DRIVURZ NOW!!1" websites which host modified executables.
- ComodoHacker 7y agoThere are plenty of them already. They'll just get more traffic from conscious users, as there won't be an official source anymore. Little cost-saving for Intel, big harm for their users.
- ggzgd 7y agoInteresting, what might the reason be? Please refrain from commenting if you are an AMD fanboy.
- NullPrefix 7y agoCan you please finally upgrade?
- wwright 7y agoEven if we assume all motherboards using BIOS can be replaced, it is still valid to want to find software downloads for those that still exist.
- pgl 7y agoWhy are they doing this?
- _pmf_ 7y agoMy uneducated guess would be to make reverse engineering exploits from patches harder.
- simias 7y agoThat doesn't make a lot of sense to me since we're talking about EOL software that won't receive patches in the first place. I can't think of any good reason to get rid of that besides maybe "we're revamping the website and can't be bothered to port that bit".
- beauzero 7y agoDrive sales of hardware. If you can't get drivers you have to purchase something you can get drivers for.
- squarefoot 7y agoThis was my first thought as well, although I never expected Intel willing to resort to such low tricks since it indicates they don't care at all about their customers. I would expect that move from a used car shady salesman, not from Intel: there are businesses out there that would be forced to ditch perfectly working hardware just because of this. I'll surely consider moving elsewhere in the future.
- jacquesm 7y agoThat's pretty shortsighted then. The only thing this will do is drive those sales to the competition. The people who are using this hardware are likely not doing so by choice so if you cut them off and force them to re-invest they will not be bitten the same way twice.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- vardump 7y agoI can't believe this. All these years I've been recommending Intel products because of their long term support. I know these boards are legacy, but does it really cost them that much to host the files for occasional downloaders? One would have thought they'd tread carefully after so many recent PR hits, but I guess not.
- lonelappde 7y agoIs 15 years not long term enough support for you?
- cafebabbe 7y agoIn some industries, that's not even medium-term.
- zeusk 7y agowhat industries would these be?
- metiscus 7y agoManufacturing and scientific equipment like NMRs are two that come to mind.
- fuzzfactor 7y agoCompanies other than Intel are continuing to pursue irrelevance for industrial or high-stakes operations themselves. Sometimes you've got to have a Bozo when a competitor or associated business has one or more Bozos in a decision-making position. Just to be seen as competitive or up-to-date. Apple and especially Microsoft made more money from anti-recycling after they pushed it into a position where the original superior engineering was not as lucratrive for the shareholders. Users should be grateful since they were not squeezed more thoroughly even sooner. The anti-user effect is just collateral damage.
- 7y ago
- concernedstats 7y agoExtremely direct form of planned obsolescence.
- Const-me 7y agoI wonder will Intel pull their drivers from Windows update repository? As far as I remember, since Windows 7, I generally stopped download drivers from hardware vendors, used Windows update.
- numlock86 7y agoWhat you get through Windows Update is just partial (but working) support, though. At least in my case my GPU, sound and chipset's main features run poorly with just the Windows Update drivers.
- jwildeboer 7y ago"Intel to remove all BIOS updates for their Desktop boards" seems to be a more correct headline?
- lonelappde 7y agoFor their 10+ year old End Of Life boards.
- MrGilbert 7y agoDH67BL launched in Q1/'11 for LGA1155, the last BIOS got released in 2018-10-23 (I think security fix), and it shows the same notice, so I kindly disagree: https://downloadcenter.intel.com/download/28273/BIOS-Update-BLH6710H-86A- https://downloadcenter.intel.com/download/28273/BIOS-Update-...
- jacquesm 7y agoGiven that 10+ year old boards are still perfectly serviceable for many applications and are still in widespread use all over the globe they may be End Of Life for Intel but that does not mean they are magically and suddenly all gone. The degree to which Intel stuff has proven to be insecure over the last couple of years would warrant at least some consideration for people who are still running that older hardware, especially if it does not cost Intel much to keep that hardware supported.
- mehrdadn 7y agoOuch: > It appears to be even worse. They're also removing old graphics drivers (and maybe even something else )from their website too, and that is bound to happen even earlier, the October 11th.
- dfischer 7y ago> Nobody got fired for buying Intel! Back in the day this was said all the time at the office. Things change!
- squarefoot 7y agoNow if I was an AMD exec I'd suddenly announce that "all versions of all our drivers for all hardware on all platforms will be available forever".
- pjmlp 7y agoGreat, my Brazos APU would welcome getting their OpenGL and video hardware decoding capabilities back to the level of fglrx.
- jacquesm 7y agoI never understood why AMD did not push that angle more, it is an act that would be very hard to follow by Intel unless they bought NVidia or something extreme like that. It also would allow AMD to potentially gain an edge over NVidia in the GPGPU space. Missed opportunity imo, it still seems like an excellent idea.
- zdw 7y agoAMD's market cap (44B) is much smaller in terms of market cap than either nVidia (124B) or Intel (251B), and pre-Zen they bet on mulitcore more heavily which lead to a decade of non-ideal hardware. As a result AMD didn't really have the money to dump into software for drivers and developer experience. That said, they have been working on opening up the GPU space via ROCm: https://rocm.github.io https://rocm.github.io
- int_19h 7y agoI find it hard to believe that a company with a market cap in billions can't afford, say, a dozen of developers to maintain its open source drivers.
- degenerate 7y agoDon't hold your breath. AMD has been terrible at marketing themselves against Intel for nearly 2 decades.
- nobrains 7y agoThis will lead to people downloading potentially infected drivers from unofficial sites.
- userbinator 7y agoUnfortunately, I think that's their true intent... But "potentially infected" is mostly paranoia scaremongering, unless you deliberately go for the ad-encrusted huge-flashing-download-buttons sites(and probably even those are OK) --- there's plenty of other community-based sites (like the one linked here) which I've used before for various software, and I'd say a lot of times I trust the community even more than "official" sources. Especially when the latter has commercial interests to uphold.
- iwalton3 7y agoFor anyone on Windows stuck doing this, I've had decent luck with the Snappy Driver Installer. (https://sdi-tool.org/ https://sdi-tool.org/) The project is open source, can store a complete collection of all drivers offline, and can detect and update drivers. Please do note that you should always take a system restore point, as I have had a few issues with graphics drivers installed with the tool in the past.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- boopmaster 7y agoWhat the NUC?
- Symmetry 7y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Next_Unit_of_Computing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Next_Unit_of_Computing
- A4ET8a8uTh0 7y agoI will admit that I do not understand that move; especially so if it is a cost cutting measure. Then again I remember arguing with a VP that storage is cheap and email size limits are draconian enough already. She was not pleased. Maybe it is really just about the budget.
- twobat 7y agoStorage is indeed cheap. Buying it through a service provider not so much.
- josteink 7y agoTalking to my IT department, it seems the argument is that storage is only cheap in isolation. In the real world it aggregates across products, users and hierarchies. Example email: - I want bigger mailbox to handle bigger mails incoming and outgoing. Result: bigger mailbox. - Then everyone else in the company gets bigger mailboxes. Result: bigger mailbox x1000. - Also: bigger mail-server backups. - Also: bigger desktop/user-profile backups, because Outlook duplicates all this info locally. - Also: bigger storage needs for anything also interacting/duplication selected mail (like CRM, import services, whatever). - Also: bigger backups needed for all those systems. - Etc etc. And IMO it's a perfectly valid claim. Maybe storage "only" costs $0.1 per 100GB in isolation (or whatever), but for a full company with all systems involved, in aggregate it quickly it may exceed 1000x that.
- dvfjsdhgfv 7y ago> - Then everyone else in the company gets bigger mailboxes. Result: bigger mailbox x1000. This doesn't have to be so. Some users have genuine reasons to require more mailbox storage. Not everyone has the same needs. And if 1000 users really need more space, then either they should be given the space they require, or they're doing something wrong that can be solved by technical means (like sending links to large files instead of the files themselves). > - Also: bigger desktop/user-profile backups, because Outlook duplicates all this info locally. This can be configured to some extent.
- ga-vu 7y agoNot "ALL" BIOS drivers. Just legacy ones, for boards released in the 90s and early 2000s.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- numlock86 7y ago> Unfortunately, they'll be removing all BIOS download links to all Intel desktop boards on that very same date (even the later Sandy Bridge boards) Mentioned in OP. No idea what the statement is based on, but Sandy Bridge is at least 2012'ish AFAIR.
- userbinator 7y agoMicrosoft did a similar thing silently to their downloads[1] and KB articles, but fortunately the majority of it --- if not all --- has been archived somewhere. Now if only archive.org would make it all searchable... [1] a notable example being "Calculator Plus", a 9x/2K/XP-style calculator with some enhancements, but the name has since been reused for a horrible bloated and slow buggy "app".
- flyinghamster 7y agoWindows Live Mail (the replacement for Outlook Express) is a good example. My dad uses it on his old Dell desktop, and it got carried over when he got hit with the Windows 10 dark pattern "upgrade". Now he has a new laptop, but we can't download Windows Live Mail (unless we want to risk getting it from a dodgy site), and he won't even consider Thunderbird. Argh.
- smileybarry 7y agoIf the download is digitally-signed by Microsoft, you can download it via a temporary VM and verify the installer signature. Since Live Mail is around the Vista era it should be signed.
- ivoras 7y agoAm I the only one who hears Fallout's "wah-wooo" sound and sees a message "You've lost karma!" when hearing such foot-shooting news?
- lonelappde 7y agoHeadline is unsubstantiated and false. Intel is no longer serving BIOS updates for at least one product that was released 16 years ago and last manufactured 15 years(!) ago. You've had 15 years to make copies of the BIOS files for your needs, and you can still use the original BIOS on your device. Nothing to see here.
- lullibrulli 7y agohttps://downloadcenter.intel.com/download/28273/BIOS-Update-BLH6710H-86A- https://downloadcenter.intel.com/download/28273/BIOS-Update-...
- lightedman 7y agoHeadline is fully substantiated and I also see that 1151 support (as in boards made just a few years ago) are having their BIOS/UEFI downloads nixed as well. I just tried updating my board with my 7th gen i3. No downloads when I knew one existed before (I refused to get it because everything currently just works.)
- xvilka 7y agoThis is why projects like coreboot are very important. Open source doesn't depend on someone's marketing itch.
- pgeorgi 7y agoIt depends on maintainers though. We now kick devices out of coreboot where we suspect that the code wouldn't even boot anymore and there's nobody able to prove otherwise. We'd certainly welcome them moving to coreboot. They might even gain a new feature or two, but there's work involved on their part (and the story usually ends at that point).
- lstodd 7y agoStill the kicked out code is out there somewhere. As opposed to.
- pantalaimon 7y agoIt still needs someone to do something with it. And the lack thereof was the reason it got removed in the first place.
- emidln 7y agoA future someone can resurrect that code via git. A future someone who wants to interact with old BIOS code that Intel just deleted doesn't have that chance.
- pgeorgi 7y agoIndeed. And if somebody brings old code up to current standards, we're happy to put it in again. Haven't seen that happen yet though.
- zamadatix 7y agoIt seems like for new motherboards it's be easier to start with coreboot over status quo. Are there reasons this isn't true or does it come down to marketing reasons?
- unique_parrot2 7y agoHP made the same thing for desktop printers. Want to download a windows xp driver for an older printer (which is perfectly fine)?? not gonna happen from the hp site...
- rb808 7y agoD865PERL looks like it was built for a Pentium 4 in 2003. Its not like Intel is saying the board wont continue to work, just no bios updates. How often do you need to update the bios on a 16 year old system?
- lullibrulli 7y agounfortunately the same applies here: https://downloadcenter.intel.com/download/28273/BIOS-Update-BLH6710H-86A- https://downloadcenter.intel.com/download/28273/BIOS-Update-...
- rb808 7y agoOK I see that is for LGA1155 boards released 8 years ago, which isn't great but I'm not sure you need BIOS updates still.
- lightedman 7y agoThey're also doing it for 1151, which is more recent.
- smileybarry 7y ago3 years ago I needed a "beta"[1] BIOS update for my 2012 Ivy Bridge motherboard because it shipped with EFI and every NVIDIA GPU since Pascal (2016) only works in UEFI mode. That machine is still perfectly good for modern games. If I had chosen to upgrade my GPU later and Gigabyte did the same as Intel now, I would be SOL. [1] Gigabyte used to mark BIOS updates as "beta" when it's past their time (in 2012 Gigabyte terms: a year) to provide less warranty & support in case something goes wrong. They're as stable as the main versions.
- lullibrulli 7y agoIntel at least felt that you needed an BIOS update for it on 10/23/2018.
- p1mrx 7y ago
- mopsi 7y agoStories like these is why I have the habit of archiving all manuals and software related to devices I buy, from motherboards to security cameras. Internet does forget.
- Fnoord 7y agoThis is why I am glad with fwupd.org and its frontends.
- unixhero 7y agoIs this due to a "management" style leadership pushed on companies typically by Private Equity? I am beginning to see PE as an agent of eroding quality in after sales support and many other areas.
- C1sc0cat 7y agoNormal Short termism for listed companies not just PE
- Supersaiyan_IV 7y agoCorporations saving money by cutting down on the cheap things. Bang head [here].
- JoeAltmaier 7y agoSurely they have industrial contracts to support hardware? I'm surprised they've adopted this burn-bridges approach.
- Havoc 7y agohuh? Surely the mighty Intel could just dump it on a FTP server, declare it unsupported and call it a day? I mean they're basically already there: >All versions are provided as is.
- famtem 7y agook
- famtem 7y agolol