[syslinux] Conditional kernel selection based on CPUID/DMI info

[H. Peter Anvin]

Jeffrey Hutzelman wrote:
> 
> So far, I've avoided any com32 modules.  Previous comboot modules I've done 
> have been farily trivial and com32 seemed more effort than it was worth. 
> That's clearly not the case here, and doing it in C would be quite a bit 
> more maintainable, but it wouldn't have met my need -- the original purpose 
> of the bioschk module was to detect a buggy BIOS that made user interaction 
> from a com32 module impossible.  What actually happened was that I deployed 
> new menus using menu.c32 instead of PXE's built-in menu capability, and our 
> staff started complaining that they could no longer select anything from 
> the menu!
> 
> The bug is not in SYSLINUX, BTW.  I'm pretty sure it's been discussed here 
> before, and Dell has acknowledged it.  Unfortunately, that was over a year 
> ago, and the platform in question is officially EOL, so there's not much 
> hope of a fix from them.  Their own BIOS updater run under MEMDISK has the 
> same problem; I had to put together a version that would boot and do the 
> update without asking for confirmation.
> 

I recently fixed an interaction between Dell BIOSes and SYSLINUX (it was 
a syslinux bug which only bit when COM32 modules where invoked.)  The 
only other Dell bug that I know about off the top of my head only bit 
with isolinux.

I looked for the discussion you described, couldn't find it offhand.  I 
found a problem with OptiPlex GX620, said to be fixed in BIOS version 
A12 (the bug was present only in version A11, supposedly), is this the one?

	-hpa