>...why don't you think what you said through a bit...

I have.

>I flash my motherboard with a custom BIOS image I've hex-edited together.

Congratulations.

>Now, it won't boot correctly.

woops

>Yes, it's reversible - I can probably figure out a way to flash the original image back on.

In most cases. It is possible to brick some hardware, but easily-brickable hardware is probably not something that OEM's should ship; that's just asking for trouble.

>However, the motherboard manufacturer is hardly going to tolerate me taking it back going, you need to fix this. That's hardly reasonable.

They might if they like selling things. AMD tolerated and even encouraged overclocking, finding that it won them more sales than problems that it may have created.

>They're going to be...err...you did something stupid and unsupported. You fix it. They might give me advice, but the onus is certainly not on them.

Well, yes and no. They ought to either publish a spec that would tell you how to fix it, or let you ship it to them and re-flash it for a reasonable fee. People do send motherboards back all the time claiming that it "broke" or was "DOA" when they may know full well what broke it. Right or wrong, a company will have to do a postmortem engineering analysis on a part to prove it was tampered with, and they will need to be able to prove tampering if they don't want bad press from consumers. I'm not saying that makes lying right, but that is probably the reality for a lot of cases.

>Or say I flash my car's ECU to give me another 5 HP of output. Then my car stops starting up reliably.

>I can't exactly take it back to Honda and say, fix it. They'll be like, we sold you a working car - you did something out of spec, and overrode the ECU software - we aren't fixing it.

Again, the consumer can say "I didn't do anything, I'll sue you. I'll tell the local TV station." Now the dealer has to risk a lawsuit, bad press, in which case they will need a professional engineering analysis; or the Dealer could just re-flash the firmware. I'm not sure how it is handled these days, but the customer can create a lot of doubt about the origin of the problem, and make it difficult for the dealer/carmaker to prove malfeasance on the customer's part.

>Yes, it's reversible - I can flash the right ECU image back on and it will start up correctly - but the onus isn't on them to hand hold me through that process.

If markets worked the way I was taught they ought to, then customers would never tolerate that. Then you could expect to take your car to the dealer, and for a reasonable fee they'd re-flash your ECU firmware or whatever, and then try to sell you some new floor-mats and an oil change. Unfortunately in many cases you're right; you can expect to be treated like a chump at the car dealership's service dep't. which is why "Right to Repair" laws are important. I think it is interesting now that Toyota has tried the "Cosmic Ray Defense" for exploding firmware how a car-maker (especially Toyota) might react to a customer with a bricked ECU who offers no explanation as to why his ECU is bricked.

>Cheers, Victor

Cheers indeed, and happy Thanksgiving, unless you are Native American, in which case, my apologies. (If you're not in the US be thankful Columbus didn't find your country instead.)