[X-Unix] Re: Putting Serial # into System Profiler

[Peter Dyballa]

Am 24.11.2004 um 23:26 schrieb 
x-unix-request at listserver.themacintoshguy.com:

> Apple System Profiler displays the serial number in only about half of
> our company computers (mostly iMacs). How would one go about entering
> serial numbers into the Apple System Profiler for the rest of them?

The serial number is stored in the OpenBoot PROM (OBP). There probably 
is more than way to access it, the first one being burning, the second 
a hard reset/PROM reset. The third one would be Forth, the programming 
language of OBP while your 'in the OBP', having booted while pressing 
alt-Apple-O-F (OF = Open Firmware). In this state you can list devices, 
change working directories, set boot paths, list your environment ...

ioreg can retrieve quite a lot of settings from OBP. 'ioreg -l -p 
IODeviceTree | grep IOPlatformSerialNumber' returns that serial number.

There are a few places with documentation on the OpenBoot PROM, coming 
from DEC/Digital, adopted by Sun and Apple too. These two companies 
have some docs around ...

Sun OS/Solaris has a simple command, eeprom, to alter the values in OBP 
(as root, the super-user). In the time when the PROMs were unreliable 
and had to be exchanged every few years there was a (not hat official) 
programme to change the MAC address to be able to re-use a once bought 
software license.

--
Greetings

   Pete                                           0
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