# accessible BIOS

Category: Geeks r Us

## Post 1 by skpoet711 (Zone BBS is my Life) on Monday, 24-Mar-2008 12:39:17

I've been searching around for quite some time regarding BIOS that is more accessible.
From what I have gathered, some older mbs was able to support the bns through the serial port, thus permitting a totally blind person to manipulate their basic in and out system.
However, waiting for a sighted person, instructing that person to navigate to and customizing the BIOS is greatly inefficient for a total like me who builds systems.
1. I'm unable to set up RAIDs
2. I can't OC
3. Boot devices requires me memorizing the number of arrow downs and key clicks. Trusting that I do everything precisely.
There are much more, but you get the idea.
Anyone that is total have found a means of achieving this, without having a sighted help you do/memorizing the keystrokes?
MS and Intel is working on EFI, which will allow the OS to manipulate the BIOS, or some aspects of it. However, it is in the working stages. Linux I believe has a means of manipulating the BIOS through the os as well from what I've read.
Unfortunately windows still hold the motherload of the market in OS, so most clients wants windows or is familiar with it.

## Post 2 by b3n (I'm going for the prolific poster awards!) on Friday, 04-Apr-2008 20:25:24

Short answer no.
I did some research on a old isa card that spoke the bios to you, but you'd first have to find one and then get pci to isa which I dont even kno if it exists atm, so thats out of the window.
The only slight possible way of doing it that I can see is doing ocr by hooking something up to vga and letting it enterprit the output but:
1: no way of seeing what item your on
2: some of the bios has options on the left and the right, and ocr would read line by line
3: I wouldn't ever trust ocr if I was oc'ing.
Efi should be interesting so ong as its not so full featured that viruses can get into it. But what with it beeing abe to provide basic drivers to windows, it kinda would be nice if it could output some speech to the pc speaker perhaps? nothing great, but it could work.
I remember my old toshiba had a control panel addin that would let you change stuff in the bios from with in windows, but I now am quite sure that it wouldn't have done it on the fly mearly instructed the bios to do it after a restart, as changing the size of ram that graphics was allowed wouldn't be instant.
Its a hard world lol.

## Post 3 by frequency (the music man) on Saturday, 05-Apr-2008 0:58:07

check out something called the pc weasel

## Post 4 by louiano (I'm going for the prolific poster awards!) on Sunday, 06-Apr-2008 2:23:39

hmm, I think for linux there is something called coreboot. So you could get an ELF executable with the settings you want and run it through the software. I still wish though there was another way to output the information in an accessible format.

## Post 5 by Nick6489 (11 years a Zoner) on Sunday, 06-Apr-2008 13:36:39

And then, as the Dark Princess might be able to tell you, there is the asus M2 Crosshair. Expensive board, AMD based, and Asus, so that's a few strikes against it, but the bios supposedly does speak.

## Post 6 by louiano (I'm going for the prolific poster awards!) on Tuesday, 08-Apr-2008 1:47:43

hmm, I really wonder, say something goes wrong here and need to access my hard drive from any operative system... is there a way to do this? As far as I have tried i have not been successful getting linux speakup because the ftp does not allow the downloading of some files.. although it can beany other OS, just as long as i can get my data copied or moved to some other location... suggestions?

## Post 7 by skpoet711 (Zone BBS is my Life) on Tuesday, 08-Apr-2008 9:18:41

From your statement I assume that the hd in question is on a network?(ftp)
Is it internal or remote?
Or am I really off on my assumption?
I'll need to know before I sound like a dumbass suggesting something that don't even apply to you. *snicker*

## Post 8 by louiano (I'm going for the prolific poster awards!) on Tuesday, 08-Apr-2008 21:29:51

no, the hard drive is on a computer that cannot start windows.

## Post 9 by skpoet711 (Zone BBS is my Life) on Wednesday, 09-Apr-2008 1:11:45

Please accept my apologies, as I am completely lost.
I'd just put it in to an enclosure and grab whatever off of it from another machine. *shrug*
After de-activating it if an os is loaded.

## Post 10 by louiano (I'm going for the prolific poster awards!) on Thursday, 10-Apr-2008 22:12:41

lol that is a work around I would not have thought of, and you were not lost. My friend is locked out of his operative system and thus he doesn't have another computer or a disk enclosure... i was just wondering if there are more independent ways to know whats going on the the screen besides having someone to read it out loud for you.

## Post 11 by skpoet711 (Zone BBS is my Life) on Thursday, 10-Apr-2008 23:20:44

well, to be honestly, there is but one suggestion I can make. However, I have not tried this route, so my advice may be suspect :)
1. Go to http://www.freedomscientific.com/fs_downloads/morejaws.asp
2. download the jaws for dos, and read on the .txt file for instructions.
3. Use the windows cd to open the dos console via the recovery console... same thing IMO
4. see if he can get access there.
I recall in win98 you can get to the dos prompt outside of the windows environment completely. Yet I am unable to find a means to access dos independent from the windows cd, or windows all together. Microsoft seem to have gotten rid of that feature since win xp. I wonder why. Someone please correct me if I am mistaken. As I too would like to reach dos in winxp/vista without having to boot in to windows or use my cd.
If your friend can get to dos, and get that screen reader to work with it, he should be able to extract all his data/copy it elsewhere? hmm

## Post 12 by blake (Zone BBS Addict) on Saturday, 12-Apr-2008 15:32:45

Jaws for Dos is free, so it will never expire. One comment however. Jaws for Dos only appears to work with hardware speech synthesizers. I have not yet found a way to make Jaws for Dos work with software-based synthesizers, IE, speech through the sound card.