Ok, I've been watching for about the last week. I got my I-paq from TD 2 days before Christmas. I have not had any problems that other users are having. I was able to upgrade to 2.0 using the Ctrl-U. Shorted the middle pin of the reset to the shield, lets me get to the bios using the Compaq key. Also my brightness dosen't work as well. (I know, i'm not alone). I believe that TFT displays have a brightness control as well as a contrast control but dualscan displays only have contrast. (at least this has been the case with my last 2 laptops).Maybe Compaq put the brightness control there to confuse everyone.:) Also I desoldered my bios chip SST 39SF020 and installed a 32 pin plcc socket out of an old Hughes DSS I had laying around. I'm waiting for a plcc to dip adapter for my universal programmer to arrive so that I can re-flash when ready. Also it looks like the SST 39SF020 is readable from top to bottom. The SST 39SF020P is the protected variant. I cut a hole in the top of the metal shield with a dremel to allow swapping the bios without taking the shield off. That's all I've done so far. Nice work to everyone who has dug into this puppy so far.
I doubt very much that compaq used 2 different styles of Bios chips. More likely 2 different versions of the Bios. Mine is... System ROM date 03/01/00 And the system ROM Family 686S4. Short of desoldering the 32 pin plcc chip, for a read. (not for the faint of heart). And installing a socket, I'm not sure about a back-door into the BIOS. I should have a dump of the hex image in a few days.
flash
So is there any chance that the OS upgrade to also flashes the BIOS and makes hackable systems unhackable? Somewhere in a previous message someone asked a similar question. There question was, did the people with the unhackable systems start with the new OS or make a connection to the MSN service.
Until I hack the IA, I'd like to mess around with the MSN service but I am concerned that connecting will flash the bios.
I don't know about the "unhackable" machines, but when mine arrived it was 1.0. I did the paperclip trick before I logged on to MSN and took the upgrade to 2.0. I can still get into the BIOS after the upgrade, so I doubt very much that upgrading will lock any "hackable" machines out of the BIOS (at least with 2.0) but in the future...who knows.
flash
here's a thought, is there some other key that you have to press to get into the bios? F1, ESC... what do those buttons on the top of the keyboard map out to any way?
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