EFI BIOS on ASUS P6T series?

On Tue, 18 Aug 2009 13:36:08 +0200, David Brown
wrote:

Andrew Hamilton wrote:

What you say here is entirely true, but my understanding was that the PC
in question was being bought and built now, with a view to possibly
upgrading in the future - thus support for large boot disks is not a big
issue here. But you are of course right that it will be an issue in the

Of course. I tend to "overbuild" my systems so that I can 4-5 years
out of them before I "want" to upgrade. In this case, I "need" to
upgrade to 64-bit and higher performance. But today's "higher
performance" may be tomorrow's file server, and I would want to up the
drive capacity considerably in the future.

future - probably forcing more systems over to EFI bioses.

So, the "money question." Can the BIOS in the Asus P6T Deluxe V2
board I buy today be flashed to an EFI BIOS, or is there some hardware
required that is simply not included on the P6T (or the X58 chipset.)

Thanks for the intelligent, to the point reply above.

-AH

Andrew Hamilton wrote:
On Tue, 18 Aug 2009 13:36:08 +0200, David Brown
wrote:

Andrew Hamilton wrote:

What you say here is entirely true, but my understanding was that the PC
in question was being bought and built now, with a view to possibly
upgrading in the future - thus support for large boot disks is not a big
issue here. But you are of course right that it will be an issue in the

Of course. I tend to "overbuild" my systems so that I can 4-5 years
out of them before I "want" to upgrade. In this case, I "need" to
upgrade to 64-bit and higher performance. But today's "higher
performance" may be tomorrow's file server, and I would want to up the
drive capacity considerably in the future.


Out of curiosity, what OS are you thinking of installing?

future - probably forcing more systems over to EFI bioses.

So, the "money question." Can the BIOS in the Asus P6T Deluxe V2
board I buy today be flashed to an EFI BIOS, or is there some hardware
required that is simply not included on the P6T (or the X58 chipset.)


I don't know, and the ASUS website gave no obvious answers (presumably
you wouldn't be asking if it did ...). But again, as long as your boot
drive isn't over 2 TB, then it probably doesn't matter.

Thanks for the intelligent, to the point reply above.

-AH

On Mon, 24 Aug 2009 12:45:20 +0200, David Brown
wrote:

Andrew Hamilton wrote:
On Tue, 18 Aug 2009 13:36:08 +0200, David Brown
wrote:

Out of curiosity, what OS are you thinking of installing?

Initially, Windows 7 Pro or Ultimate. Maybe even two copies - one for
production use and one for experimental stuff and trial installs. But
for "scratching around," probably a NFR Server 2008 that I friend can
pass along to me, maybe even a Linux or two.

If I really want to go crazy, there is always the Hercules emulator
for System/360. Then I would need a partition for something like MVS.



future - probably forcing more systems over to EFI bioses.

So, the "money question." Can the BIOS in the Asus P6T Deluxe V2
board I buy today be flashed to an EFI BIOS, or is there some hardware
required that is simply not included on the P6T (or the X58 chipset.)


I don't know, and the ASUS website gave no obvious answers (presumably
you wouldn't be asking if it did ...). But again, as long as your boot

No it didn't. I appreciate and respect the time of the people who
respond to my questions, so I don't post stuff that I can find easily
on the ASUS site.

drive isn't over 2 TB, then it probably doesn't matter.

For now, it doesn't matter. Hitachi just announced a 5-platter 2 TB
Deskstar, with "relaxed" bit densities, at list price $270 (IIRC). I'm
sure that in about a year, there will be the 3-platter replacement,
and in about 18 months, it will be under $100.

So it's easy enough to imagine a 4 TB drive being announced in about 2
years.

-AH