>Remember when BIOS flash ROMs were write-protected with a physical hardware switch/jumper? Remember how that was only for a short 1-2 years as a knee jerk rea

>Remember when BIOS flash ROMs were write-protected with a physical hardware switch/jumper? Remember how that was only for a short 1-2 years as a knee jerk reaction to CIH virus? Older PCs had bios in EPROM (UV window on the chip) instead of EEPROM. That was the only physical protection. Later Intel introduced firmware hub (FWH) with software protection against flashing (you had to unlock certain memory region/io access), then we got SPI flash chips with some copy protection (again software controlled). Jumper was a short lived, useless (after the fact) feature that died because nobody needed/wanted/asked for it.