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by weej 2283 days ago
I'm having PTSD just thinking about updates of YY to CCYY in mainframe code. Very real and heavy investment across numerous industries from aviation to financial and more. At a macro level, I remember it being pretty well managed risk and mitigation.
1 comments

When you start 3+ years before the known threshold date, you're giving yourself the best chances at success. I remember flashing BIOSes for weeks in the computer labs at my university.
Oooh. Do you remember any notable number of systems turning into doorstops in the process?

I wonder what the practical mixture of NAND flash vs EEPROMs was. I understand NAND wasn't especially stable back then.

EEPROM. And there has always been a reflash method for bricked firmwares for all AMI and Phoenix BIOS' as well. Insert disk with firmware, Hold a key, power on.

Once upon a time we got somewhere in the neighborhood of 1200 dell workstations and not a single one failed the bios upgrade. 10/10 would do again