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Comment by bubblethink | Hacker News Reader

Dell is peak asshole design. They also blast fans as full speed if you install GPUs that you don't buy from them. Fuck them.

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In case you're referring to their servers (from https://dl.dell.com/manuals/common/poweredge_pcie_cooling.pd... ):

> The automatic system cooling response for third-party cards provisions airflow based on common industry PCIe requirements, regulating the inlet air to the card to a maximum of 55°C. The algorithm also approximates airflow in linear foot per minute (LFM) for the card based on card power delivery expectations for the slot (not actual card power consumption) and sets fan speeds to meet that LFM expectation. Since the airflow delivery is based on limited information from the third-party card, it is possible that this estimated airflow delivery may result in overcooling or undercooling of the card. Therefore, Dell EMC provides airflow customization for third-party PCIe adapters installed in PowerEdge platforms.

You need to use their RACADM interface to update the minimum LFM for your card.

HP is way worse than Dell. Fans at full speed I can handle. Servers permanently throwing errors because a part isn't HP branded, that's peak asshole design. So is refusing to measure status of drives if I use a third party drive sled (which is some folded metal, and some LEDs on a flex PCB) AND throwing errors about them.

Lenovo soft bricks their workstations if they detect non-branded cards in them.

No upgrading my wifi, thats a nono!

The wifi thing is slightly understandable because FCC requires you to limit your radiated emissions, and when you do the certification you have to control the entire configuration to pass the testing, which means that your radio is paired with your antenna cable and antenna in the body of the device. Allowing people to replace the radio without a paired antenna cable and antenna could cause radiated emissions to fall outside of the spectrum allowed by the FCC. It's dumb in practice but at least somewhat understandable in principle.

If you sell me something FCC-compliant and I modify it to make it noncompliant, isn't that entirely on me? Why do you need to try to stop me?

And not just stop you or refuse to activate the card, but to intentionally cause the hardware I purchased to irreparably malfunction as long as I attempt to use something you didn't sell me.

Of course, I can use a USB wifi card, no problem. Just the convenient PCI card inside the system that is specifically designed to enable a wide variety of functions aside from wifi that is locked in the BIOS just in case I wanted to use a 3rd party card of a specification that you don't happen to sell.

I’ve never heard this explanation before and I don’t buy it. Transmission power is constant regardless of the antenna used.

Yeah, it's 100% pure fresh from the ass BS.

Lenovo did that to reduce their customer's ability to buy PC expansion devices from other manufacturers, in hopes of making more aftermarket sales in the future.

It was a pure greed tactic.

It used to be very common across all OEMs, at least in the consumer space. I remember having to flash a modded BIOS on my 2012 HP laptop so it would boot with a WiFi + BT card. Back in those days it was uncommon for a laptop to have BT.

Hmm I've got an HP Z6 that doesn't seem to care?

Are you sure this isn't a 1u rack will fry itself if you put a spaceheater type of thing inside of it?

5u system, ML350Gen9. I ignore the errors, but of course that means that if a real error pops up there, I won't know. It's a lower-urgency server of my own so it's ok, but annoying as well in production.

I see the Z6 is a workstation unit, they're going to be more flexible there.

Don't forget how Dell included/includes DRM in their laptop chargers to prevent customers from buying cheap aftermarket replacements. Of course the wire for the DRM functionality is as thin as possible and is always the first thing to break.

They don’t prevent you from using aftermarket chargers. They just display a warning, which can be disabled in the BIOS.

They also set CPU speed to minimum.

I don't know what it's like currently, but when I stopped using Dell laptops a few years ago they wouldn't even boot if the battery was dead and you plugged in a third party charger or a charger with a busted data cable.

Other manufacturers do worse and prevent boot if your PCI ids aren't on a positive list.

This is for example present on thinkpads, and while you could patch the bios before, Intel bootguard now prevents you do that "for your own protection" :)

I hope the MSI leak contains actual bootguard keys for intel 11th gen+, and can be used to allow "unauthorized" PCI modules on modern thinkpads!

bootguard keys are oem specific

The MSI leak comments like https://sizeof.cat/post/leak-intel-private-keys-msi-firmware... mentioned the bootguard keys maybe have been common to other manufacturers: "It is assumed that the keys for downloading the guard are not limited to compromising MSI products and can also be used to attack equipment from other manufacturers using Intel’s 11th, 12th and 13th generation processors (for example, Intel, Lenovo and Supermicro boards are mentioned)"

Those are board that MSI OEMed for other vendors.

So servers and desktops only, which crushes my hope of getting rid of bootguard on my laptop.

What worked for some older think machines (haven't tried it on my thinkpad though) is to update the bios (can be to the same version) and change the serial nr.to all zeroes (the update script asks if you want that). That got rid of the wifi whitelist i encountered.

Very interesting!

Could you please explain which serial? Can you do dmidecode and tell me which Handle/ UUID is all zeroes?

Even if it may not directly apply to current thinkpads, it implies the UEFI module might have other conditionals before going on checking the positive list - something that should be easy to check by reversing the LenovoWmaPolicyDxe.sct PE32.

If you’re interested, I have a dump of my TP bios flash unmodified and then the same version I paid some Russian guy to modify so the whitelist is removed and an extra menu unlocked. I basically sent them the dump, and after a “donation” I got the patches dump back.

Would love to learn how to figure out what the changes are because with my limited knowledge I didn’t figure anything out.

Which thinkpad model?

If you want to learn, https://erfur.github.io/2019/03/28/down_the_rabbit_hole_pt3.... is a good guide!

Thanks, I am so going down this rabbit hole.

It's for an X230, I wanted 802.11ac wifi in it.

If you are interested in doing other modifications yourself, also read about UEFI variables, how they control menu options and can be tweaked with just grub

x230 is easy, just install coreboot instead of messing with bios patches.

I've run coreboot for a while but had issues with USB3 and the docking station so I unfortunately had to revert back to the Lenovo BIOS.

I'd love to buy a AMD Ryzen 3 Pro 5350g, but I don't want to deal with the stupid locked CPUs floating around from Lenovo pulls.

Restrictive nonsense seems common in the server space unfortunately. HPe do similar things. IIRC they disabled certain features if you used non-HPe ‘approved’ hard drives.

Dell also does this with their EMC storage arrays, it’s meant to push you towards their pro services. You are supposed to tell the array to order drives for you from pro services and someone from some nameless MSP contracted with dell installs it for you at a 10x markup.

Are there even any good server vendors? Dell, HPE and Lenovo do their lock-in shit. Supermicro's BMC is pretty bad. xFusion is totally-not-Huawei-I-pwomise. There's a few more that come to mind but all of them are niches like HPC and don't really do sales on a small scale.

> E.g. it is well known that adding a third-party PCIe NIC makes fans run at the maximum speed.

From the article

I observed this behavior in a Dell system about a decade ago, but based on experience over the last 5 years or so with PowerEdge servers, installing a third-party GPU no longer triggers the (extremely loud) maximum fan-speed response.

Even if that's the case the damage is done.

I still tell people about capacitor plaque and how we should have class actioned Dell out of existence over it

Why Dell specifically? Wasn’t all hardware that bought the cheaper capacitors affected?

Because they were the most well known of the affected companies and they didn't really do much to repair the goodwill the issue cost them.

Sure, they "put up $300 million for repairs" according to https://www.theguardian.com/technology/blog/2010/jun/29/dell..., but I bet the lions share of that went to their largest purchasers, so the people who blew their school's IT budget on Dell computers were just SOL.

They also stop producing laptop batteries after a few years while refusing to let the laptop charge 3rd party battery replacements, significantly limiting the useful life of their laptops.

You can actually call a small business rep and get them to order it for you. They still produce them or else have them in stock, just don’t sell them online.

Isn't that illegal? Hijacking your customer pc if they install something that isn't from them?

Nominally done for your protection. Lowering power (clock) and heat load (fast fan) for unapproved gear prevents things from going dead and getting people REALLY mad and likely reduces warranty claims.

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