debian man page for vpd

VPD(4)							 BSD/i386 Kernel Interfaces Manual						    VPD(4)

NAME
     vpd -- Vital Product Data kernel interface

SYNOPSIS
     device vpd

DESCRIPTION
     IBM ThinkPad notebooks (and most IBM desktop PCs) have a 48-byte Vital Product Data (VPD) structure located in the BIOS Shadow RAM.

     The VPD provides machine type and model information, the build ID (this is roughly the BIOS version) and serial number information.

     The vpd driver scans the BIOS area and claims the memory used by the VPD structure.  It provides the sysctl(3) branch hw.vpd to allow this
     information to be accessed by the userland.  The following variables are provided, one per VPD attachment (there should only be one):

     MACHINE_TYPE   (machine.type) Machine type.
     MACHINE_MODEL  (machine.model) Machine model.
     BUILD_ID	    (build.id) BIOS Build ID.
     SERIAL_BOX     (serial.box) Box Serial Number.
     SERIAL_PLANAR  (serial.planar) Motherboard Serial Number.

SEE ALSO
     TP General - Using the BIOS Build ID to identify IBM ThinkPad systems, Reference #: MIGR-45120, November 22, 2002,
     http://www.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=psg1MIGR-45120.

HISTORY
     The vpd driver first appeared in FreeBSD 5.1.

AUTHORS
     The vpd driver and this manual page were written by Matthew N. Dodd <mdodd@FreeBSD.org>.

BSD
								  August 31, 2004							       BSD