The 90’s? Locked bootloaders would’ve meant people woukdve simply bought different machines without a locked bootloader.
See the IBM/Phoenix BIOS war - it’s essentially the same thing. IBM didn’t want to license their BIOS to everyone, so Phoenix reverse engineered it. If I remember right, IBM was trying to lock everyone to using their OS.
This! Manufacturers were trying to lock people into their systems, just by different means. Reverse engineering a piece of low-level software (BIOS) so that you could run high-level software written for that machine architecture on different hardware was the main battle of the day.
The 90’s? Locked bootloaders would’ve meant people woukdve simply bought different machines without a locked bootloader.
See the IBM/Phoenix BIOS war - it’s essentially the same thing. IBM didn’t want to license their BIOS to everyone, so Phoenix reverse engineered it. If I remember right, IBM was trying to lock everyone to using their OS.
its good to remember computers were used mostly by the computer people back then.
now with layman using theses devices en masse, things are a bit different. they dont need the nerds ro have a successful product anymore.
This! Manufacturers were trying to lock people into their systems, just by different means. Reverse engineering a piece of low-level software (BIOS) so that you could run high-level software written for that machine architecture on different hardware was the main battle of the day.
Made me think of the first season of Halt and Catch Fire.