Apr 28, 2024 08:00:00

An IRC client that runs on your motherboard's UEFI is born

UEFI is a program that runs before the PC's OS starts up, and IRC is a tool that allows clients to chat with each other regardless of the device or OS. Software developer Philip Teng developed ' UEFIRC ', which combines these to make IRC available on UEFI.

An IRC client on your motherboard | Phillip Tennen
https://axleos.com/an-irc-client-in-your-motherboard/

The following shows how to connect to an IRC server from UEFI using UEFIRC.

UEFIRC Demo - YouTube


'UEFIRC is written in Rust and utilizes its own GUI toolkit and TrueType renderer. You can connect to IRC servers, chat, and read messages from the comfort of your motherboard's pre-boot environment,' Teng said.

UEFI was originally introduced as a replacement for BIOS . BIOS runs in a 16-bit real-mode environment, which imposes a 1MB memory limit on the amount of code that can be loaded and executed from ROM, and is limited to running only in a 16-bit environment. However, UEFI can run in 64-bit mode from the start, which has the advantage of eliminating memory limitations.

What is 'UEFI' that replaces the BIOS that runs at PC startup? - GIGAZINE

UEFI also provides APIs that are useful for switching VESA display resolutions, allocating memory, and interacting with the EFI file system, and also provides a mechanism for loading the OS over the network instead of loading it from an installation stored on a local block device. To support this mechanism, UEFI includes a network stack that implements TCP, and also exposes an API that allows applications running in the preboot environment to directly interact with the network stack. It seems that this API is what Teng used this time.

Teng describes the project as an 'elaborate joke' and says he wouldn't find it very useful as a client.

The UEFIRC GitHub repository is available at:

GitHub - codyd51/uefirc: An IRC client on your motherboard
https://github.com/codyd51/uefirc

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