Man page 8 : biosdecode

biosdecode - BIOS information decoder

biosdecode [ OPTIONS ]

biosdecode parses the BIOS memory and prints information about all structures (or entry points) it knows of. Currently known entry point types are:

+1n SMBIOS (System Management BIOS)
Use

dmidecode for a more detailed output.

DMI (Desktop Management Interface, a legacy version of SMBIOS)
Use

dmidecode for a more detailed output.

SYSID

PNP (Plug and Play)

ACPI (Advanced Configuration and Power Interface)

BIOS32 (BIOS32 Service Directory)

PIR (PCI IRQ Routing)

32OS (BIOS32 Extension, Compaq-specific)
See

ownership for a Compaq ownership tag retrieval tool.

SNY (Sony-specific, not decoded)

VPD (Vital Product Data, IBM-specific)
Use

vpddecode for a more detailed output.

FJKEYINF (Application Panel, Fujitsu-specific)

biosdecode started its life as a part of

dmidecode but as more entry point types were added, if was moved to a different program.

R

    Read memory from device FILE (default: /dev/mem)

R

    Display usage information and exit

R

    Display the version and exit

/dev/mem

Most of the time,

biosdecode prints too much information (you don't really care about addresses) or not enough (because it doesn't follow pointers and has no lookup tables).

Alan Cox, Jean Delvare

R dmidecode (8),

R mem (4),

R ownership (8),

R vpddecode (8)