Comment on Why don't cell phones have BIOS?
LainTrain@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 months ago
There is a BIOS - a Basic Input Output System, usually made by the SoC manufacturer that acts as a bootloader shim to get the Android bootloader going (fastboot/recovery menu level here) which then loads the Android kernel. It’s the same as UEFI or the legacy BIOS, but it does not come with a configuration utility which is the menu that most people think of when they think of “BIOS” I.e. “going into the bios”.
Unlike an UEFI implementation on modern AMD64 systems, the typical arm bootrom is a masked rom written to flash-once ROM memory.
This bootrom performs the same vital functions of sending key instructions and data (including setup of requirements) to the processor for it to start executing the bootloader program off of memory, in this case the android bootloader.
Contrary to popular belief and the top comment ITT, android does not use the Linux kernel, it’s based on an LTS Linux kernel, but highly modified with patches to form the ACKs. source.android.com/docs/core/architecture/kernel
Without the config utility the ARM SoC BIOS is largely hidden from the user, but the veil is lifted when it fails in spectacular ways: en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualcomm_EDL_mode
Hawke@lemmy.world 5 months ago
This right here.
My first PC (a 386 circa 1989) did not have a config utility. It had a bootable floppy disk that could configure the BIOS settings. I think all it could change was the system time and the CHS values of the hard drive(s).
fuckwit_mcbumcrumble@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 months ago
Kinda funny how we’ve somewhat returned to that. Modern EFIs typically let you change settings from within your OS. I remember having a motherboard in like 2011 or 2012 with a great GUI that let me tweak everything. I’d set an overclock in the OS and just reboot for it to take effect.
Not sure why more boards don’t offer this anymore other than maybe security. But like with cryptic ass programs I can still change bios settings.