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How to get bios or motherbord number or seriel number
- Thread starter musalk
- Start date
This isn't an exact science (see thread314-182358). In order to retrieve this sort of information from all machines you would require God-like insight into multiple archetectures and a profound understanding of information that is, as often as not, proprietary... (you aren't supposed to know those things LOL.)
But nothing stands in the way of experimentation. Buy a few IBMs, Hewlett Packards, ComPAQs, Dells, Gateways, Packard Bells (if you can stomache it) and several hundred generic machines with a wide range of motherboards... then start experimenting.
The various Award BIOSes might be a good place to start (they have always been popular and began to proliferate even more after the company was bought-out by Phoenix). The following code was generated following a bit of experimentation with some Award based machines. I used the memory-dumping routines found in faq314-137 and a Hex-viewer to find what I was looking for.
Retrieve the Award BIOS ID String:[tt]
' You should find the information somewhere
' shortly after this memory segment....
DEF SEG = &HFEC0
' Get a chunk of BIOS memory.
' The location of BIOS ID String may not be
' exact, so get a "searchable" chunk of mem.
' (Experimentation found the ID String starting
' at more than one segment boundry on various
' machines.)
FOR L = 0 TO &HFF
p = PEEK(L)
M$ = M$ + CHR$(p)
NEXT
DEF SEG
' You will probably find more than one instance
' of the string "Award" in the memory starting at
' segment &HFEC0, if not, the results would be
' meaningless.... Terminate program.
IF INSTR(M$, "Award"
< 1 THEN
PRINT "This machine doesn't have an Award BIOS."
END
END IF
' The ID string will be preceeded by "$" and
' followed by Chr$(0), so use those to define
' the search.
SCheck = INSTR(M$, "$"
Echeck = INSTR(SCheck + 1, M$, CHR$(0))
IF SCheck < 1 OR Echeck < 1 OR (Echeck - SCheck - 2) < 1 THEN
PRINT "Can't find BIOS ID String."
ELSE
BIOSid$ = MID$(M$, SCheck + 1, Echeck - SCheck - 2)
IF INSTR(BIOSid$, "-" < 1 or INSTR(BIOSid$, "/" < 1 THEN
PRINT "Invalid BIOS ID String."
END
END IF
PRINT "Award BIOS ID String:"
PRINT BIOSid$
END IF
[/tt]
Thread711-173216 shows the chipset and motherboard manufacturer values that can be used to parse the resulting string into detailed and meaningful information.
Perish the thought... if you want to create a routine that works on every machine, this is going to require a great deal of work. But I think you knew that.
Good luck. Feel free to ask for help if you encounter difficulties along the way.
But nothing stands in the way of experimentation. Buy a few IBMs, Hewlett Packards, ComPAQs, Dells, Gateways, Packard Bells (if you can stomache it) and several hundred generic machines with a wide range of motherboards... then start experimenting.
The various Award BIOSes might be a good place to start (they have always been popular and began to proliferate even more after the company was bought-out by Phoenix). The following code was generated following a bit of experimentation with some Award based machines. I used the memory-dumping routines found in faq314-137 and a Hex-viewer to find what I was looking for.
Retrieve the Award BIOS ID String:[tt]
' You should find the information somewhere
' shortly after this memory segment....
DEF SEG = &HFEC0
' Get a chunk of BIOS memory.
' The location of BIOS ID String may not be
' exact, so get a "searchable" chunk of mem.
' (Experimentation found the ID String starting
' at more than one segment boundry on various
' machines.)
FOR L = 0 TO &HFF
p = PEEK(L)
M$ = M$ + CHR$(p)
NEXT
DEF SEG
' You will probably find more than one instance
' of the string "Award" in the memory starting at
' segment &HFEC0, if not, the results would be
' meaningless.... Terminate program.
IF INSTR(M$, "Award"
< 1 THENPRINT "This machine doesn't have an Award BIOS."
END
END IF
' The ID string will be preceeded by "$" and
' followed by Chr$(0), so use those to define
' the search.
SCheck = INSTR(M$, "$"
Echeck = INSTR(SCheck + 1, M$, CHR$(0))
IF SCheck < 1 OR Echeck < 1 OR (Echeck - SCheck - 2) < 1 THEN
PRINT "Can't find BIOS ID String."
ELSE
BIOSid$ = MID$(M$, SCheck + 1, Echeck - SCheck - 2)
IF INSTR(BIOSid$, "-"
< 1 or INSTR(BIOSid$, "/" < 1 THENPRINT "Invalid BIOS ID String."
END
END IF
PRINT "Award BIOS ID String:"
PRINT BIOSid$
END IF
[/tt]
Thread711-173216 shows the chipset and motherboard manufacturer values that can be used to parse the resulting string into detailed and meaningful information.
Perish the thought... if you want to create a routine that works on every machine, this is going to require a great deal of work. But I think you knew that.
Good luck. Feel free to ask for help if you encounter difficulties along the way.
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