4 ms·
You would probably appreciate this clip [0] from the AMC show Halt and Catch Fire where the character reads out the entire firmware from an IBM PC using lights.
by echelon_musk 3y ago
You would probably appreciate this clip [0] from the AMC show Halt and Catch Fire where the character reads out the entire firmware from an IBM PC using lights.
[0] https://youtube.com/watch?v=jSZwtrnKxf4 https://youtube.com/watch?v=jSZwtrnKxf4
- bogantech 3y agoCouldn't even make it through the whole thing it's so cringe. Checking voltages and they have a sine wave on the oscilloscope lol. You could just read out the whole rom contents quite easily with whatever computer you had handy. There was no read back protection or scrambling - You give it an address and read out the bytes
- ndiddy 3y agoAlso IBM put a listing of the BIOS ROM in the PC technical reference manual so none of this was necessary to begin with.
- derwiki 3y agoA character in Cryptonomicon did something similar, using the lights to blink out morse code so he could gain information without his captors realizing it.
- epcoa 3y agoThere’s virtually nothing in that clip that is factual and it’s not internally consistent. There would be no mystery about which chip is the BIOS, it’s not even self consistent with the claim of it being “off the shelf” junk. You could just dump the thing. And even if you couldn’t, 7 segment displays and other niceties were available. The oscilloscope stuff has no basis in reality. HCF is a fine series with good storytelling, but the technical stuff is all window dressing and should not be examined too closely or confused with the real deal.