Programatically determining BootROM version?

[Sean McBride]

What is the correct way to determine the BootROM version? I want to do
so because there's a bug that's fixed with a firmware update and I need
to be able to detect so I can warn the user if they need to update.

There doesn't seem to be a Gestalt or sysctl AFAICT... maybe in the
IORegistry?

Thanks!

[Alan Kruger]

Boot into OpenFirmware and check the version.

Sean McBride wrote:

> What is the correct way to determine the BootROM version? I want to do
> so because there's a bug that's fixed with a firmware update and I need
> to be able to detect so I can warn the user if they need to update.
>
> There doesn't seem to be a Gestalt or sysctl AFAICT... maybe in the
> IORegistry?
>
> Thanks!

[Sean McBride]

In article <H%rdb.81952$xx4.9044943@twister.neo.rr.com>,
Alan Kruger <akruger@kent.edu> wrote:

> Boot into OpenFirmware and check the version.

hehehe. But, as I said in the subject line, I'm looking to determine
this programatically, more specifically with C. Apple System Profiler
is able to get the info from somewhere (and show it), I'd like to do the
same from my code.

[David Phillip Oster]

In article <cwatson-70C9C0.00345626092003@aeinews.aei.ca>,
Sean McBride <cwatson@cam.org> wrote:

> What is the correct way to determine the BootROM version? I want to do
> so because there's a bug that's fixed with a firmware update and I need
> to be able to detect so I can warn the user if they need to update.

Although this doesn't actually answer your question, you might look at
The Nitrogen Manifesto, which documents a library called "Nitrogen",
which wraps the Carbon API, making the Carbon API much easier to use
(Nitrogen handles all the CFRetain/CFRelease nonsense, and converts
error codes to exceptions so that routines can return useful values.)

look at <http://nitric.sourceforge.net>. In Nitrogen, you can say
something like:

Namespace N = Nitrogen;

std::string s = N::Convert<std::string>(
N::CFCast<CFStringRef>(
N::CFDictionaryGetValue(
N::CFCast<CFDictionaryRef>(
N::CFPropertyListCreateFromXMLData(
N::CFURLCreateWithFileSystemPath(
CFSTR("/System/Library/CoreServices/SystemVersion.plist"),
KCFURLPOSIXPathStyle,
false
)
)
),
CFSTR("ProductBuildVerson")
)
)
);

to get the build number of the O.S.

The ROM firmware value is probably available through IOKit, in a similar
way.