I'm almost ashamed to admit it, but I still have a few IBM mobos. Just the mobos, combined with real parts, not the rest of the IBM ****. Only because these beasts use TPM hardware and Phoenix BIOS versions that offer bulletproof paranoid overkill security, passwords, and authorization. What for? Not because I'm particularly paranoid, though it's nice to have the option. But they're incredibly useful for stripping access passwords off other pieces of hardware from other machines; they can meet or exceed any security level present in any BIOS. They use entire tiers of security that most consumer PCs don't bother to incorporate, following cryptic official security paradigms and standards (which IBM itself has largely created). For example, it's amazing how a single mobo jumper can wipe hardware passwords off many HDDs, or how the BIOS can change DVD RPC as a "vendor" even after the "user" has made the maximum 5 changes, or how many pieces of problematic hardware respond to otherwise inaccessible "firmware reset" commands. I don't know with certainty, but they say that even the onboard firmware itself is also encrypted to prevent unauthorized forensic extraction of passwords. Can't beat that.
All these excessive security controls, user level this, administrator level that ... I've been able to get as many as 11 passwords (some prompted, some invisible) between power-on and Windows logon, heehee ... it seems to me this is an extension of IBM's obsolete unworkable "one big brain supercomputer attached to lots of dumb terminals" mentality in the real distributed computing world where people (well, at least some people) are not the retarded blundering incompetents that IBM execs believe. Their corporate model is all about controls, glacial bureaucracy, hierarchies, established procedures, following the rules. Maybe this concept worked in the 1960's but in the modern world things have changed while IBM hasn't kept up. They were a technological world leader yesterday but today they're just an overbloated patent troll which sells vague things like "consulting" and "infrastructure". The only hardware they have left to sell is all made by their competitors.
The real problem with these IBM mobos is that the manuals (the real manuals that contain actually useful technical data instead of stupid setup posters, instructions about how to install a stick of RAM, and childish warnings) are bloody impossible to find. Tech support is unhelpful and occassionally hostile (after all, only an IBM certified tech could possibly do the ridiculous things I expect are possible; it's both astonishing and inconceivable that I'd want to use an IBM mobo in a homemade non-IBM computer, and if the all-knowing IBM documentation doesn't properly explain things then it certainly cannot be done). Mobos are made by Intel but to IBM specs, same features as generic Intel boards using the same chipset, but all the connector headers are screwy custom arrangements. Normally compatible RAM and processors don't always work because IBM hasn't seen fit to include parameters for the parts in the authorized hardware database within the BIOS. Overclocking is utterly impossible, plain and simple. There are still minor issues: for example, I haven't got a clue how to attach front panel USB ports and digital audio into the unmarked undocumented unstandard 2x10-pin headers.
Other than that ... IBM PCs suck. They're vastly overpriced. Some parts (like the mobo) are IBM badged, built to IBM OEM spec. Other parts are IBM rebadged; sometimes they just obscure the markings with their own IBM part number sticker, sometimes they construct tamperproof subassemblies which do the same, sometimes they actually attempt to remove the ODM markings. IBM part numbers, PNUs, FRUs, ORUs ... big bureaucratic beehive busyness that doesn't accomplish **** except protect their jobs earning money as a parasitic middleman. Whenever the hardware isn't sufficiently dependent on the IBM mothership, they make sure that the software, OS, and the drivers all are - they probably pay a small army of people to rewrite the rewrites of all the IBM notations they use to obscure the real parts. It's near impossible to obtain drivers and firmware through IBM (unless you subscribe to their business model and get what they want to give to their tiers of techs to trickle down to you, all at great cost) ... at least until you identify all the re-badged parts and go right to the proper OEM sites. I'd never recommend IBM systems for anybody, anywhere, in any business. Except maybe the NSA, CIA, or some other kind of spies and secret police.
