
Intel desktop board BIOS update end-of-life - pcdoodle
https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?f=46&t=69184
======
xvilka
This is why projects like coreboot are very important. Open source doesn't
depend on someone's marketing itch.

~~~
pgeorgi
It depends on maintainers though. We now kick devices out of coreboot where we
suspect that the code wouldn't even boot anymore and there's nobody able to
prove otherwise.

We'd certainly welcome them moving to coreboot. They might even gain a new
feature or two, but there's work involved on their part (and the story usually
ends at that point).

~~~
lstodd
Still the kicked out code is out there somewhere.

As opposed to.

~~~
pantalaimon
It still needs someone to do something with it. And the lack thereof was the
reason it got removed in the first place.

~~~
emidln
A future someone can resurrect that code via git. A future someone who wants
to interact with old BIOS code that Intel just deleted doesn't have that
chance.

~~~
pgeorgi
Indeed. And if somebody brings old code up to current standards, we're happy
to put it in again. Haven't seen that happen yet though.

------
bencollier49
I almost wonder if archive.org could get involved here, as these sorts of
things (specifically including graphics drivers) will be a prerequisite for
some forms of digital preservation and retrocomputing.

~~~
zozbot234
See [https://www.archiveteam.org](https://www.archiveteam.org) \- they've done
such things before, and they do post their work to the IA. And yes, this is
something where they should be involved.

~~~
JensRex
This is old news. We already grabbed it all, when it was first announced.

~~~
jacquesm
Where did they end up? Or are they not available yet?

~~~
dallas_
They will be in the IA, I think they're in staging right now, someone has said
they'll upload them soon

------
vardump
I can't believe this. All these years I've been recommending Intel products
because of their long term support.

I know these boards are legacy, but does it really cost them that much to host
the files for occasional downloaders?

One would have thought they'd tread carefully after so many recent PR hits,
but I guess not.

~~~
lonelappde
Is 15 years not long term enough support for you?

~~~
cafebabbe
In some industries, that's not even medium-term.

~~~
zeusk
what industries would these be?

~~~
simias
Most of them in my experience. Many industrial machines have lifespans well
beyond 15years. Big companies buy the state of the art and when they decide to
replace the old machines they resell them to smaller companies who can't
afford to buy the newest model.

I know many people on HN work in web technologies where last year's technology
is already obsolete but I've worked in small hardware companies that still
used industrial equipment controlled using a serial keyboard with a DIN
connector and a monochrome CRT. I've seen people order parts for 20+yo
industrial soldering ovens.

You can't really tell somebody with a highly expensive, perfectly functioning
industrial machine that they have to buy a new one because you can't find the
driver for the motherboard of the controller.

~~~
MS90
Case in point: McLaren uses a special Compaq laptop from 1992 to service old
F1's. Why? Well, the car was made in 1992, and so was the ECU.

[https://jalopnik.com/this-ancient-laptop-is-the-only-key-
to-...](https://jalopnik.com/this-ancient-laptop-is-the-only-key-to-the-most-
valuabl-1773662267)

~~~
dsfyu404ed
Back in my IT days we used a laptop that had a windows NT 4.0 sticker on it
(running windows 2k) to run the ID printer that printed company IDs. These
kinds of setups aren't that uncommon. At small scale it's easier and cheaper
to keep old stuff running than to migrate.

~~~
nordsieck
> At small scale it's easier and cheaper to keep old stuff running than to
> migrate.

Especially if the machine can be isolated from the internet (like a printer
controller).

------
A4ET8a8uTh0
I will admit that I do not understand that move; especially so if it is a cost
cutting measure.

Then again I remember arguing with a VP that storage is cheap and email size
limits are draconian enough already. She was not pleased.

Maybe it is really just about the budget.

~~~
twobat
Storage is indeed cheap. Buying it through a service provider not so much.

~~~
josteink
Talking to my IT department, it seems the argument is that storage is only
cheap in isolation. In the real world it aggregates across products, users and
hierarchies.

Example email:

\- I want bigger mailbox to handle bigger mails incoming and outgoing. Result:
bigger mailbox.

\- Then everyone else in the company gets bigger mailboxes. Result: bigger
mailbox x1000.

\- Also: bigger mail-server backups.

\- Also: bigger desktop/user-profile backups, because Outlook duplicates all
this info locally.

\- Also: bigger storage needs for anything also interacting/duplication
selected mail (like CRM, import services, whatever).

\- Also: bigger backups needed for all those systems.

\- Etc etc.

And IMO it's a perfectly valid claim.

Maybe storage "only" costs $0.1 per 100GB in isolation (or whatever), but for
a full company with all systems involved, in aggregate it quickly it may
exceed 1000x that.

~~~
dvfjsdhgfv
> \- Then everyone else in the company gets bigger mailboxes. Result: bigger
> mailbox x1000.

This doesn't have to be so. Some users have genuine reasons to require more
mailbox storage. Not everyone has the same needs. And if 1000 users really
need more space, then either they should be given the space they require, or
they're doing something wrong that can be solved by technical means (like
sending links to large files instead of the files themselves).

> \- Also: bigger desktop/user-profile backups, because Outlook duplicates all
> this info locally.

This can be configured to some extent.

~~~
nicoburns
> This doesn't have to be so. Some users have genuine reasons to require...

Indeed. Organisations cause them all sorts of problems by not allowing
exceptions to the rules.

------
nobrains
This will lead to people downloading potentially infected drivers from
unofficial sites.

~~~
iwalton3
For anyone on Windows stuck doing this, I've had decent luck with the Snappy
Driver Installer. ([https://sdi-tool.org/](https://sdi-tool.org/))

The project is open source, can store a complete collection of all drivers
offline, and can detect and update drivers. Please do note that you should
always take a system restore point, as I have had a few issues with graphics
drivers installed with the tool in the past.

------
mehrdadn
Ouch:

> It appears to be even worse. They're also removing old graphics drivers (and
> maybe even something else )from their website too, and that is bound to
> happen even earlier, the October 11th.

------
squarefoot
Now if I was an AMD exec I'd suddenly announce that "all versions of all our
drivers for all hardware on all platforms will be available forever".

~~~
degenerate
Don't hold your breath. AMD has been terrible at marketing themselves against
Intel for nearly 2 decades.

~~~
TheHypnotist
I feel like there was a period of time around 2000 when they had some edge, at
least with gamers. Soon after that they disappeared for a while and only now
i'm hearing about them again.

~~~
ChikkaChiChi
They lost a ton of ground right around 2006 when Core2Duo became a thing and
they couldn't keep up.

~~~
thisisnico
I remember the K8, Almost every gamer I knew had one. Everybody was rooting
for AMD at the time. They were the king. Dual core, 64bit support, almost
double the IPC of Intel, lower power than Intel, and more stable. The
frequencies weren't as high. My 2.6Ghz Athlon 64 3700+ demolished many Intel
CPU's. And then I remember when Core2Duo became a thing like you said.
Completely ruined AMD in every benchmark. I believe that Intel had switched
their architecture over to what was Pentium Mobile at the time and refactored
it. Prescott was optimized for frequency, but the IPC was terrible, as was the
heat. We had 4GHZ CPU's back in 2004.

~~~
type0
K6 was monumental by AMD, for the price those suckers ran circles around the
Pentiums of the time and were more stable at that.

------
mopsi
Stories like these is why I have the habit of archiving all manuals and
software related to devices I buy, from motherboards to security cameras.
Internet _does_ forget.

------
Const-me
I wonder will Intel pull their drivers from Windows update repository?

As far as I remember, since Windows 7, I generally stopped download drivers
from hardware vendors, used Windows update.

~~~
numlock86
What you get through Windows Update is just partial (but working) support,
though. At least in my case my GPU, sound and chipset's main features run
poorly with just the Windows Update drivers.

------
gjvnq
Sounds like it is time to call on r/DataHoarders

~~~
bantunes
They've already done it
[https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/d6dkoi/intel_r...](https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/d6dkoi/intel_removing_unknown_amount_of_drivers_and/)

~~~
est31
Interesting observation:

> Note that they are actively removing files, they removed near 200 between
> the time I scraped the links and the time I started the downloads... shits
> going fast.

------
concernedstats
Extremely direct form of planned obsolescence.

------
rb808
D865PERL looks like it was built for a Pentium 4 in 2003. Its not like Intel
is saying the board wont continue to work, just no bios updates. How often do
you need to update the bios on a 16 year old system?

~~~
lullibrulli
unfortunately the same applies here:
[https://downloadcenter.intel.com/download/28273/BIOS-
Update-...](https://downloadcenter.intel.com/download/28273/BIOS-Update-
BLH6710H-86A-)

~~~
rb808
OK I see that is for LGA1155 boards released 8 years ago, which isn't great
but I'm not sure you need BIOS updates still.

~~~
lullibrulli
Intel at least felt that you needed an BIOS update for it on 10/23/2018.

~~~
p1mrx
I'm running a DH87RL with the 2018 BIOS. It's pretty remarkable that they
released those updates after 6 years of nothing, though they only changed the
CPU microcode. With the number of CPU vulnerabilities being uncovered
recently, they're probably deleting the BIOS files because they're tired of
maintaining the microcode patches.

------
pgl
Why are they doing this?

~~~
lonelappde
Because supporting 15 year old cheap consumer products is a waste of energy.

~~~
asenk
Since this fabricated "15 year old" hardware claim is repeated for who knows
what reason, I'm going to have to spam the debunking of it as well.

It's nowhere near to being true. Software is going to be gone for haswell
generation,[1] boards originally released just 6 years ago[2].

1\.
[https://downloadcenter.intel.com/download/28295?product=7090...](https://downloadcenter.intel.com/download/28295?product=709031).
2\.
[https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/compare.html?pro...](https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/compare.html?productIds=70903,69045,69044,72031)

------
unique_parrot2
HP made the same thing for desktop printers. Want to download a windows xp
driver for an older printer (which is perfectly fine)?? not gonna happen from
the hp site...

------
ga-vu
Not "ALL" BIOS drivers.

Just legacy ones, for boards released in the 90s and early 2000s.

~~~
numlock86
> Unfortunately, they'll be removing all BIOS download links to all Intel
> desktop boards on that very same date (even the later Sandy Bridge boards)

Mentioned in OP. No idea what the statement is based on, but Sandy Bridge is
at least 2012'ish AFAIR.

------
userbinator
Microsoft did a similar thing silently to their downloads[1] and KB articles,
but fortunately the majority of it --- if not all --- has been archived
somewhere.

Now if only archive.org would make it all searchable...

[1] a notable example being "Calculator Plus", a 9x/2K/XP-style calculator
with some enhancements, but the name has since been reused for a horrible
bloated and slow buggy "app".

~~~
flyinghamster
Windows Live Mail (the replacement for Outlook Express) is a good example. My
dad uses it on his old Dell desktop, and it got carried over when he got hit
with the Windows 10 dark pattern "upgrade".

Now he has a new laptop, but we can't download Windows Live Mail (unless we
want to risk getting it from a dodgy site), and he won't even consider
Thunderbird. Argh.

~~~
smileybarry
If the download is digitally-signed by Microsoft, you can download it via a
temporary VM and verify the installer signature. Since Live Mail is around the
Vista era it should be signed.

------
dfischer
> Nobody got fired for buying Intel!

Back in the day this was said all the time at the office. Things change!

------
unixhero
Is this due to a "management" style leadership pushed on companies typically
by Private Equity? I am beginning to see PE as an agent of eroding quality in
after sales support and many other areas.

~~~
C1sc0cat
Normal Short termism for listed companies not just PE

------
jwildeboer
"Intel to remove all BIOS updates _for their Desktop boards_ " seems to be a
more correct headline?

~~~
lonelappde
For their 10+ year old End Of Life boards.

~~~
jacquesm
Given that 10+ year old boards are still perfectly serviceable for many
applications and are still in widespread use all over the globe they may be
End Of Life for Intel but that does not mean they are magically and suddenly
all gone. The degree to which Intel stuff has proven to be insecure over the
last couple of years would warrant at least some consideration for people who
are still running that older hardware, especially if it does not cost Intel
much to keep that hardware supported.

------
Fnoord
This is why I am glad with fwupd.org and its frontends.

------
JoeAltmaier
Surely they have industrial contracts to support hardware? I'm surprised
they've adopted this burn-bridges approach.

------
boopmaster
What the NUC?

~~~
Symmetry
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Next_Unit_of_Computing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Next_Unit_of_Computing)

------
Supersaiyan_IV
Corporations saving money by cutting down on the cheap things. Bang head
[here].

------
Havoc
huh?

Surely the mighty Intel could just dump it on a FTP server, declare it
unsupported and call it a day? I mean they're basically already there:

>All versions are provided as is.

------
ivoras
Am I the only one who hears Fallout's "wah-wooo" sound and sees a message
"You've lost karma!" when hearing such foot-shooting news?

------
randunel
> It seems Intel wants to wipe out their entire desktop board support section
> from their website.

If this is true, it's the perfect opportunity to create dodgy "DOWLOAD DRIVURZ
NOW!!1" websites which host modified executables.

~~~
ComodoHacker
There are plenty of them already. They'll just get more traffic from conscious
users, as there won't be an official source anymore. Little cost-saving for
Intel, big harm for their users.

------
lonelappde
Headline is unsubstantiated and false.

Intel is no longer serving BIOS updates for at least one product that was
released 16 years ago and last manufactured 15 years(!) ago. You've had 15
years to make copies of the BIOS files for your needs, and you can still use
the original BIOS on your device.

Nothing to see here.

~~~
lightedman
Headline is fully substantiated and I also see that 1151 support (as in boards
made just a few years ago) are having their BIOS/UEFI downloads nixed as well.
I just tried updating my board with my 7th gen i3. No downloads when I knew
one existed before (I refused to get it because everything currently just
works.)

