Hi Gordon... > # ... The CPU has several sleep states, and in > # the deeper ones, all state / register information is lost, so you > # have to save it to RAM first, and the BIOS will jump to your wake-up > # handler to let you restore it when the system wakes up.
> I would be *extremely* surprised if this was ever a hard reset, because > as noted earlier, there's not a standardized way to perform such a > reset... Partially true ;-). ACPI tables tell you how to do all sorts of things with your system, including "go to suspend"... The wake-up process can tell a hard reset from suspend-leaving SMI by things like looking at RAM for some magic (gone at power up reset), looking at ACPI chipset state, and so on... Not sure about the details. BIOS stuff. Some 15 years ago, 386 BIOSes could distinguish hard reset from "reset to leave protected mode" (286 software does that) by looking at a flag in CMOS RAM and by looking at a flag in the keyboard controller (ask it whether the keyboard controller "send hard reset to system" command is the cause for the reset) ... Basically there are often SEVERAL ways to cause a system reset. The main question is: Can the IDE controller distinguish hard reset from "software tells some hardware to trigger a reset" case as good as the BIOS can? At least c't claims that a suspend / wakeup cycle CAN, at least on some systems, make the IDE controller issue a reset. Or, if you do not like that wording, cause a hardware reset signal that gets passed through the IDE controller to the IDE disk. > In the BIOS, you can set a password > because the Freeze command hasn't been issued yet. Basically true - but are there any BIOSes with any user interface which can prompt you for the harddisk password yet? If so, which? Eric ------------------------------------------------------- SF email is sponsored by - The IT Product Guide Read honest & candid reviews on hundreds of IT Products from real users. Discover which products truly live up to the hype. Start reading now. http://ads.osdn.com/?ad_id=6595&alloc_id=14396&op=click _______________________________________________ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
