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Home / Other I-Appliances / Philips/AOL-TV Flashing the BIOS Flashing the BIOS

Flashing the BIOS (modified 0 times) mevanson Profile I had problems flashing the BIOS with all the standard flash programs. Until I found UniFlash at http://www.pppr.sk/rainbow/programs.html#UniFlash It supports the 5530 PCI brige and thus can flash the BIOS. Have successfully done that, but have not found any BIOS that works. If you don't have a programmer to recover with, I'd suggest getting another chip and flashing the original BIOS onto that and attempt to boot. If you've done that, you've got a safe backup in case you hose the original chip. It's great to see some activity in this forum! 08-28-2002 16:16:00

RE:Flashing the BIOS (modified 0 times) mevanson Profile Was able to spend a little more time at it this evening. I've modified the phoenix bios decoder that I've posted about before to insert an Editor module that I extracted from another bios. I placed it in the free space at the bottom of the ROM. I confirmed that I successfully placed it into the ROM by extracting it again using the original code and performing a diff. I booted with the ROM and pressed F2 but did not get any different results. So I've started to take a look at the code in the ROM to see if perhaps they are expecting some other input in order to access the ROM (i.e. pins crossed on the printer port or something of the sort). My concern in the past was that even if we could determine the other input we'd not be able to modify the ROM to remove the code preventing us from having access. Certainly we could modify the code, but I wasn't sure what compression method was being used to store it in the BIOS. With some investigation tonight, it turns out the the LZARI algorithm is being used (http://www.programmersheaven.com/zone5/cat858/2260.htm for a C example). I was able to confirm by decompressing a segment of the ROM with the same results as the previous tool. So, now we've got a way of updating the ROM, if we can just figure out what updates need to be made. 08-28-2002 21:39:39

RE:Flashing the BIOS (modified 0 times) TempestII Profile That's great news. Have you taken a look at the Acer BIOS yet, since the machines are similar maybe it will have some clues. 08-29-2002 04:50:14

RE:Flashing the BIOS (modified 0 times) mevanson Profile Thanks for the suggestion. I'm not sure that there is much value in spending time looking at the BIOS from the Acer machine. Despite running versions of the same operating system, there is not much relationship between the two. They have different CPU, io controller, chipset, sound, and video. It is important to have a BIOS matching in at least the first three of those areas. In the case of the AOL/TV the VGA bios is actually part of the system BIOS. For those that have used the previously mentioned BIOS utility, the section labelled BIOS.2 contains the VGA BIOS. I did attempt to try using the BIOS from the GCT allwell boxes, but that was awhile ago. I now can't find a place to download their bios (I originally got it from the Taiwan site). If I got a hold of it again, I might try extracting the VGA BIOS from the AOL/TV and injecting it into the GCT BIOS. Both machines are similar (I think they have the same chipset, io controller, CPU, and even the cyberpro). The difference is that with the allwell, they use the VGA and sound portions of the 5530 instead of the same parts on the cyberpro. The AOL/TV is the reverse. I did take a look at the screen shots and it was readily apparent that the BIOS was a Phoenix BIOS. If it was, there might be a little benefit a looking at the available "sections" in the ROM. I have found another Phoenix ROM that has a similar list of components and that is how I learned the "Editor" module is missing. I'm not sure that the Editor module is necessary to change BIOS settings, but the name would suggest that it might be used for that. So, if anyone knows where to find the BIOS, let me know and I'll check it out. 08-29-2002 17:15:58

RE:Flashing the BIOS (modified 0 times) mevanson Profile I should have said before that Update.2 is the VGA BIOS not BIOS.2. I did find the BIOS for the allwell machine (search for 4bios.zip in the websurfer forum). I remove extraneous ROMS and inserted the VGA BIOS from the AOLTV and it does not boot. Too bad :( but expected. 08-29-2002 22:53:31

RE:Flashing the BIOS (modified 0 times) mevanson Profile I successfully removed and modified the BIOS.2 module. I located some code that detected that the F2 key had been pressed and I changed one byte to instead check for F3. I did this as a simple test to see if I'd found the right spot. I recompressed the section and reinserted the module. I used the original code to reextract all the modules and it completed successfully. A file compare revealed the 1 byte was different. Flashing this new BIOS and booting does not work. I get the same black screen as I have with other BIOSes. I wonder if the BIOS is doing some sort of checksumming and detected that this bios is not valid. I also see that there is an additional flash chip an AT49F1614 which is a 2MB flash. Not sure how this fits into the boot process (or if it's used at all). 09-02-2002 08:36:30

RE:Flashing the BIOS (modified 0 times) kNiTe_oWl Profile I was kinda wondering if the AT49F1614 flash chip is storing some form of checksum as well as the recovery information - perhaps even the BIOS editing routine. I corrupted the BIOS, accidentally ;) and using the PS2 keyboard hack, I think it was ctrl+F2, I could be wrong about this, will need to try again to verify, I was able to get the recovery screen to come up and dial up the PHILIPS server and repaired the BIOS for me. I am really close to disabling the AT49F1614 chip and seeing if it still boots. kNiTe-oWl 09-02-2002 21:38:59

RE:Flashing the BIOS (modified 0 times) mevanson Profile It is Control-F2. I'd gotten that screen once before but it was when I corrupted the drive and so I did not know there was a hot-key to bring it up. I'd have to assume that it is on the AT49F1614. Perhaps they could do it with a small enough code to get it in the normal ROM, but with the VGA bios, etc there'd not be much room. 09-02-2002 23:29:32

RE:Flashing the BIOS (modified 0 times) mevanson Profile Well, what do you know! I've got an image of the contents of the AT49F1614. After reviewing one of the pages related to the Acer, I did a memory dump of the machine. I dumped the first 10 megs of memory (I know, I know there are only 8 mb in the machine). Well, the last two meg contain an image of the flash. Some interesting stuff: * The contents indicate that at least parts of it are a file system. Same indications as the on disk contents. * Acer is mentioned twice in the dump. Still definitely different hardware. * The following are all mentioned in one block: NT150.Boca.NC200.G100.CT300.Philips.PH200.CT500. Maybe model numbers of similar hardware. * Phone number: 1-888-592-6588. I'd guess this is a dialup used to get a phone book to lookup a local number to complete the download. * http://werp.proxy.aol.com:80/SoftwareUpdate.pcl and http://werp.proxy.aol.com:80/phonehome.pcl I could not access these from my local machine. Probably only accessible from one of their dialup numbers. * What looks like a username/password pair: aolnet/newuser If someone's got a location to post to, I can post the utility I used to dump the memory. It is done in asm/pascal and makes use of "flat" mode to access extended memory from real mode. It was created using http://www.programmersheaven.com/zone5/cat19/1364.htm as a guide. Alternatively, the NT150 sites suggest using GRDB.exe (Get Real Debugger). 09-03-2002 17:46:58

RE:Flashing the BIOS (modified 0 times) kNiTe_oWl Profile Oh I see. No wonder I was so confuse. I did a BIOS/MEMORY dump a while back, forgot the program I used, and I got all this same information. Couldn't figure out why these would be in the BIOS and why the file was so large for a BIOS ROM. This makes sence now. kNiTe-oWl 09-03-2002 21:41:15

RE:Flashing the BIOS (modified 0 times) kNiTe_oWl Profile mevanson, The phoenix bios utility that you wrote and are using, is it possible to get a copy of them? I have the source code to the decoding software, but my programing skills have gotten rusty and it would take me too long to add the require item. Just trying not to re-invent the wheel again if I didn't have to. Thanks. kNiTe-oWl 09-03-2002 21:47:50

RE:Flashing the BIOS (modified 0 times) mevanson Profile knite_owl -- I'd be glad to make my code available to you. Have you got a place I can put it up? I make no guarantees about the code or it's ability to to do what you want or that it won't hose up your machine. I did determine that the phoedeco sources I used as a basis for this code does not fully document the header. In particular, one of the compressed length fields was not documented. I've since modified to my code to fill in this value properly. I've not yet attempted to boot with a BIOS modded in this way. I'll let you know once I do. On another note, I don't think I'll be doing much more work on this box. During my hot swap endeavours, I've managed to break one of the address pins for the flash chip and thus the machine doesn't boot. I have sucessfully booted it using a paper clip to close the gap, but that greatly impacts my ability to swap chips and flash new bioses. 09-08-2002 02:00:25

RE:Flashing the BIOS (modified 0 times) mevanson Profile I was able to boot with my modified BIOS. I modified a spot in which I thought they were detecting they F2 key being pressed. I wanted to identify whether or not I had the correct location. So I modified the BIOS to accept F3 instead of F2. I must have the wrong spot because F2 is still the working spot. But nonetheless, this is good news. It means we can modify the BIOS. It just means that we need to figure out what needs to be modified. 09-08-2002 02:31:38

RE:Flashing the BIOS (modified 0 times) mevanson Profile I was able to locate where the BIOS identifies the Ctrl-F2 key (for accessing restore mode) and F2 for BIOS setup. I have successfully changed both keys to something different. Build the new BIOS, flashed it, and rebooted. New keys worked, old ones did not. NOP'd a couple of conditional jumps after the F2 detection with no appreciable results. Then I added an Editor module from another BIOS and when I pressed F2, the machine locked up. This indicates to me that the BIOS does require the Editor module to change the settings but I did not have a compatible one. I tried two different Editor modules from two different BIOSes and could not get either to start up. We probably need one made specifically for the AOLTV BIOS. Of course, perhaps it's not needed and all my "educated" guesses have been incorrect. On a side note, if you use the restore code, you must have the original flash chip in the socket for it to work. I'd been operating off another chip that I use for my testing and the update would fail before very early. If you look at the code on the AT49F1614, you'll see there are references to quite a few different flash chips, so I suppose if you had any of them, it might work just fine. 09-08-2002 23:05:20

RE:Flashing the BIOS (modified 0 times) kNiTe_oWl Profile mevanson Thank you. I can receive the files by email or with MSN Messenger. You can contact me at knite_owl @ email . com remove all the extra spaces for both email or MSN Messenger. kNiTe-oWl 09-08-2002 23:38:38

RE:Flashing the BIOS (modified 0 times) jsmmd Profile Can anyone point me in the direction of a chip or another bios that I could buy to use as a test bios for bios tweaking and tinkering? I'm new to bios hacking, and would love to offer some assistance. 11-28-2002 21:44:06

RE:Flashing the BIOS (modified 0 times) NarShadda Profile I'd like to get a copy of the utility you used to dump the RAM/ROM. I'm trying to get an image of the ROM in the NT-150 for comparison, but I'm having trouble using GRDB. Maybe I'm not doing it right, but when I enable flat real memory mode and attempt a dump, it locks up. NarShadda 04-26-2003 22:33:53

RE:Flashing the BIOS (modified 0 times) mevanson Profile I used Uniflash to backup and re-flash the BIOS. http://www.pppr.sk/rainbow/programs.html 05-05-2003 10:44:48

RE:Flashing the BIOS (modified 0 times) Dwight Profile Has anyone had any luck changing the bios ? 06-09-2003 21:41:14

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