[8337] in cryptography@c2.net mail archive
Re: About Gilmore's letter on IBM&Intel push copy protection into ordinary disk drives
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Steven M. Bellovin)
Sun Dec 24 19:00:12 2000
From: "Steven M. Bellovin" <smb@research.att.com>
To: die@die.com
Cc: David Honig <honig@sprynet.com>, Peter Wayner <pcw2@flyzone.com>,
John Gilmore <gnu@toad.com>, cryptography@c2.net,
CYBERIA-L@listserv.aol.com, cypherpunks@toad.com
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Date: Sun, 24 Dec 2000 16:10:25 -0500
Message-Id: <20001224211026.397C135DC2@smb.research.att.com>
In message <20001224150321.A24733@die.com>, Dave Emery writes:
>
>
> A note on this note - I was told back in that era by Sun field
>service people that the standard thing to do when a motherboard failed
>was to swap the ID prom from the old motherboard onto the new one, thus
>avoiding the whole license conversion problem in the first place (but of
>course also doing wonders for the ability to track specific pieces of
>hardware and document ECO levels and the like, since a significant number
>of motherboards had swapped ID proms in which all the other information
>in the prom didn't match the actual board).
"Standard"? It was more than that; it was the *right* thing to do. On
a diskless workstation, there was no other identity to the machine; if
you didn't swap the ID prom -- which was used for the low-order 24 bits
of the Ethernet address -- your machine wouldn't receive the proper
boot image, etc. Add to that the number of machines in the mid-to-late
80's that didn't have ARP, and it was utterly necessary.
--Steve Bellovin
