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Comment by userbinator | Hacker News Reader

The "anonymous BIOS" is just begging to be replaced with a copy of the actual IBM BIOS (whose source code is also available), but I guess they decided not to supply it for copyright reasons; on the other hand, they did clone the hardware... I bet it raises all sorts of difficult questions for the IP lawyers.

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IBM themselves released the board schematics for the 5150.

IBM also released the source for the BIOS - it’s still copyrighted.

In what year did they do that?

I recall it being part of the documentation that came with the original PCs.

> IBM published the entire listings of the BIOS for its original PC, PC XT, PC AT, and other contemporary PC models, in an appendix of the IBM PC Technical Reference Manual for each machine type.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BIOS

The same year the PC was released. The BIOS was listed in the tech reference manual appendix A.

http://classiccomputers.info/down/IBM/IBM_PC_5150/IBM_5150_T...

You wouldn't have a link, would you? I'd be interested in this...

http://www.minuszerodegrees.net/manuals/IBM_5150_Technical_R...

This is the technical manual for it

Thank you very much! Much obliged!

PC clones were deemed legal back in the day. No reason this wouldn't be.

Compaq created a new BIOS from a clean sheet of paper design, not a reverse engineered or ROM dump. The code of the BIOS on the PC and PC/XT were copyrighted.

I heard a tale - but can't find an online reference - for the first Compaq PC BIOS containing a bit that said 'Not (C) IBM' in order to pass some software checks searching for the strings '(C) IBM' being present at certain specific BIOS addresses.

userbinator's post clearly mentions cloning the hardware being problematic legality-wise and I was replying to that. Nobody's saying the cloned BIOS is problematic legal-wise.

Compaq wrote a specification based on IBM's published code listing. Then they handed it over to a separate team to reimplement.

What's the issue with cloning the hardware?

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