I-Appliance BBS The Official Source for Internet Appliance Upgrades and Mods BBS Main List | Sign In | Sign Up | Search | Help | Linux-Hacker.net Reply to Thread | Printer |

Home / Other I-Appliances / Intel dot.station BIOS (Part II)

BIOS (Part II) (modified 0 times) jsmmd Profile This thread is a continuation of the original BIOS thread. Please see that thread for additional BIOS related information. http://www.linux-hacker.net/cgi-bin/UltraBoard/UltraBoard.pl?Action=ShowPost&Board=idot&Post=7 04-23-2003 13:12:01

RE:BIOS (Part II) (modified 0 times) keith721 Profile VooD: My order for the PowerLeap socket was delayed. I cannot test your BIOS with the 1.3 GHz Tualatin Celeron this weekend. Apologies... keith721 04-25-2003 17:27:23

RE:BIOS (Part II) (modified 0 times) Kludgemeister Profile Frustration I am feeling very stupid today, like a village blacksmith trying to work on an electronic ignition. I have the BOXD810EMO motherboard, which came with P05 BIOS. No BIOS lockout at all, boots the Win98 hard drive fine. I can confirm that the AMI flashing utility that VooD posted (thank you, VooD, for all your research and work!) does not work to update, only to back up the BIOS. So I cannot use the ABAZ 512kb bin files. The split ABAZ bin files that VooD posted (which total 384kb) do not work for me either, because Express BIOS Update gives the error message This program is unable to continue. Intel(R) Express BIOS Update cannot find all of the necessary associated BIOS files to perform the update with. and I am also confused because the header contains P04 identification strings. Booting to the command line only and running iflash gives the error messages (H03): Could not open input file. (H37): Start Address of image is invalid. Error: Flash update was unsuccessful. I don't know how to proceed. I can't get any of the tools to work. Kludgemeister (decent case modder, no hacker! ) 04-26-2003 13:34:37

RE:BIOS (Part II) (modified 1 times) VooD Profile A guy from the spanish forum informed from a similar fail with the ami flasher. The progress bar just didnīt move. Maybe selecting the other chipset. With iflash and express flasher..did you renamed the files to the names the flasher expects? Maybe the bios is write protected or you have to change that jumper on the board. 04-26-2003 16:12:21

RE:BIOS (Part II) (modified 1 times) VooD Profile I have a newer version of the ami flasher. v885, but I havenīt tryed yet to flash. Another strange thing is the fact many i810 motherboards shares the same eeprom 82802ab and uses a standart award flasher, but that flasher isnīt able to recognice the eeprom on the dotstation :( here is the link o the 855 version : ftp://ftp.iline.cn.ua/pub/drivers/Bios/tools/AMI/flash855.zip 04-26-2003 16:52:19

RE:BIOS (Part II) (modified 0 times) VooD Profile Hereīs is also a different and newer Ami flasher than the one I first posted, this version includes more intel whitney chipsets, and also a "82802AB v2" part....interesting......and also claims its voltage s 5v instead 12v as the first flasher said. ftp://ftp2.materiel.be/materiel/AMI82724.ZIP IT HAVE TO WORK!!! snif, snif..after so much hexediting and researching it would be a shame :( Try every flasher you find. 04-26-2003 17:23:40

RE:BIOS (Part II) (modified 1 times) VooD Profile Hey, I just noticed Uniflash 1.30 was released a weeks ago (4-13-03), and the author claims 82802AB + i810 is tested and works... http://www.pppr.sk/rainbow/programs.html#UniFlash I hope it work Iīll try tomorrow 04-26-2003 17:44:33

RE:BIOS (Part II) (modified 0 times) VooD Profile I just tryed Uniflash and at first I was a bit dissapointed as it was not able to detect the chip, but later I noticed there is a "force" option, and two ways to turn off Ami bios write protection. So I started uniflash with the "UNIFLASH -FORCE 89AD", and I have succesfully dumped the abaz again :) , I havenīt tested to flash but I think we have more chances to success with this flasher. This flasher can disable the Ami Bios write protection accessing directly to the bios registers, or using the Ami interface (UNIFLASH -AMI -FORCE 89AD). Someone dares? 04-26-2003 18:16:52

RE:BIOS (Part II) (modified 0 times) Kludgemeister Profile The fun in this is diminishing. I now have, in addition to a non-bootable Dot, a BOXD810EMO motherboard with a dead BIOS. I thought it would be safer to try Uniflash 1.30 by hotflashing the Dot BIOS (already unbootable), and had practiced removing and re-inserting the chip several times prior to powering up the motherboard. I did not notice that the last time I put the chip in backwards. Power on. Dead chip. (Cracked socket too, but I can fix that.) I am dead in the water. Kludgemeister 04-26-2003 19:57:49

RE:BIOS (Part II) (modified 0 times) VooD Profile Wow....that was a very very very very bad luck. Did you manage to flash the chip before put in the chip backwards? I hope you can fix both boards/chips. And remember, before flashing my bios try the one extracted from the dotstation (abaz) Good luck. 04-27-2003 03:52:41

RE:BIOS (Part II) (modified 0 times) VooD Profile Bad news from Uniflash main coder: "Intel boards use undocumented write protection. I don't have any Intel board to test and they always have Flash ROM chip soldered - that's not good for developing a flash utility" So I think our last chance is to use the official flasher splitting the 512kb images on the various needed files. The problem is the 160bytes header...we have to reverse engineer what structure have. 04-27-2003 06:47:16

RE:BIOS (Part II) (modified 0 times) VooD Profile Partial good news: Iīve compared the main bios files of a pair of offical intel updates (*.BI* files) and the 160 bytes header only differs in the bios version and date string. So that header isnīt very important. But Iīm not sure about what the *.sbb and *.sig files are. Some one tried to download the splitted abaz verion and rename it to P04-0008.BI* in order to use the intel update? Here are the links: http://www.linux-hacker.net/~jsmmd/files/bios/mb/abazencachos.zip <---splitted abaz http://www.linux-hacker.net/~jsmmd/files/bios/mb/expess_bios_p04_by_scaner.zip <-- p04 windows bios update http://www.linux-hacker.net/~jsmmd/files/bios/mb/biosmo810.zip <-- p04 dos bios update 04-27-2003 07:05:13

RE:BIOS (Part II) (modified 0 times) VooD Profile From a Bios article: "Even without a physical write-protect lock, modern flash ROM BIOSes have a security algorithm that helps to prevent unauthorized updates. This is the technique that Intel uses on its motherboards." Itīs going worst :( I think the sig and sbb files are some kind of checksum to test if the data in the bi* files are the data expected. 04-27-2003 07:13:13

RE:BIOS (Part II) (modified 0 times) Kludgemeister Profile VooD, No, I didn't flash the chip first (I was going to flash my "unusable" Dot chip to preserve the BOXD810EMO chip.) I have no ambition to put a faster processor in the Dot so I was going to use the ABAZ file anyway. The ABAZ files in abanencachos.zip have a header that starts "MO81010A P04", and for example the .BI0 file has a reference to "P04-0008.BI1". But these are headers you borrowed from the P04 Express BIOS files, aren't they? I think you are correct in that the filenames must match the references in the files for the updater to work correctly. Since/if the updater removes the headers while it is working, it probably doesn't matter what the headers say as long as it matches the filenames... The abazvood.bin BIOS contains the string "MO81010A.86A.003.ABAZ.0209201232" while p04.bin BIOS contains "MO81010A.86A.0008.P04.0004170800" (this string appears openly in the .sbb, .sig and .svd files also) Maybe the split ABAZ express files would have a filename like "ABAZ-003.###"? But I think you are right that there is some encrypted information in the .sbb, .sig and .svd files. Kludgemeister 04-27-2003 10:55:22

RE:BIOS (Part II) (modified 0 times) VooD Profile Yep, I borrowed the headers from the p04 iflash update...and yes, I agree with everything you say...I think we need some kind of hacker to reverse engineering the iflash flasher and bypass the "intel bios only" detection. My skills doesnīt reach so far :( 04-27-2003 14:14:56

RE:BIOS (Part II) (modified 0 times) Kludgemeister Profile VooD, I think I may have misunderstood your earlier question. I did make a backup of the BOXD810EMO BIOS as a first step, using the AMI flasher you provided. I have not looked at the image yet, but I will put the hard drive in my desktop PC tonight and look. If it looks OK, do you want a copy? Kludgemeister 04-28-2003 10:56:21

RE:BIOS (Part II) (modified 0 times) VooD Profile Nope, I did not ask you that, just wanted to know if you managed to flash before break the chip. Nevertheless, now isnīt important...according to uniflash coder we can only flash using the intel flasher (altought the others flashers arenīt tested yet), and I think they use heavy check techniques to test if the files are really a 100% intel bios :( Any cracker out there? 04-28-2003 13:05:42

RE:BIOS (Part II) (modified 1 times) Curious Profile Has anyone contacted http://www.Badflash.com he's the expert on bios! 04-28-2003 18:08:31

RE:BIOS (Part II) (modified 0 times) keith721 Profile I spent today looking for e-mail references or addresses for wild_pencil, but came up with nothing. Jack at BadFlash was going to be my next suggestion, as well. Chances are, he can contact wild_pencil for us, if at all possible. 04-28-2003 19:07:25

RE:BIOS (Part II) (modified 0 times) jsmmd Profile Ok. So is anyone going to contact him / have ever contaced". I'd rather someone he knows drop him a line, if not I guess I will. jsmmd / MethodicJon 04-29-2003 07:54:32

RE:BIOS (Part II) (modified 0 times) GWIZAH Profile | Email In case anyone is still wondering, I have wild pencils email. I don't know if anyone has tried contacting him but the last time we spoke was jan, 2002. 04-29-2003 11:15:34

RE:BIOS (Part II) (modified 0 times) jsmmd Profile Just wondering of it's possible to read the bios file(s) to figure out what it's looking for on the infamous dongle? 05-25-2003 21:32:59

RE:BIOS (Part II) (modified 1 times) VooD Profile I posted the bios of the original dotstations (capped ones) at this forum several weeks ago. It was extracted by desolding the firmware chip and using a hardware eeprom reader/programer Is in your web http://www.linux-hacker.net/~jsmmd/files/bios/mb/biosold.zip 05-28-2003 12:52:12

RE:BIOS (Part II) (modified 0 times) jsmmd Profile I am aware. I was wondering if it is possible to determine what the bios is looking for on the dongle. I sent an email to wild_pencil and here's what he wrote: Hi Jon, Chances are, the "USB Dongle" is simply a bootable USB FlashDisk with some proprietary software to tinker around with the BIOS. That'd be the easiest route for Intel to take, since it's a built-in feature. Can the Spanish machines boot from arbitrary USB devices? Or is it totally locked down to just boot Linux from the internal hard-drive? Is there a BIOS Setup menu that you can get into? (accessed via F2, DEL, etc..) Some BIOSes will boot via PXE, which is a BOOTP equivalent.. it might be worth a shot to hook the machine up to a sniffer to see if you can get it to boot from a network image. Unfortunately, I don't own one of these machines, so I'm not able to be of much help. I did download a few copies of the BIOS images from the website, and will compare them this weekend. If I find something glaringly obvious, I'll post my findings. Thanks! -WP Anyone tested these other items? 05-28-2003 13:02:19

RE:BIOS (Part II) (modified 0 times) Wild_Pencil Profile | Email Unfortunately, I haven't found anything obvious in this BIOS... whatever secrets it holds is buried deep within the ASM code. Anyway... just wondering if anyone has tried this very old AMI BIOS recovery procedure: Create an MSDOS formatted floppy. It doesn't need to be bootable. Copy your desired BIOS image to the floppy, naming it AMIBOOT.ROM. Put the floppy into a USB floppy drive, hooked up to the machine. Put the machine into "Recovery Mode". Start the machine, cross fingers. Legacy AMI BIOSes use the above procedure to recover and reinstall the BIOS from a floppy image. I do see an AMIBOOT.ROM string in the BIOS image, so who knows, you might get lucky. See also Wim's BIOS FAQ and a google on "AMIBOOT.ROM" for further research. Warning: DO NOT TRY THIS if you have no means of reverting to a "known good" BIOS image -- experiment with this ONLY if you solered a socket for your BIOS chip, and have a spare chip or programmer handy. And remember.. this is still just a longshot. -WP 06-01-2003 19:48:06

RE:BIOS (Part II) (modified 0 times) jsmmd Profile WP, Thank you for taking the time to look. I will have to call a friend to borrow a USB floppy. When I get back I'll personally check this out. 06-02-2003 04:42:23

RE:BIOS (Part II) (modified 0 times) quotequad Profile Any possibility this might work from some other USB device, say a USB flash disk? 06-02-2003 21:58:50

RE:BIOS (Part II) (modified 0 times) jsmmd Profile Bios can be flashed though Blueriver OS. See the following thread: http://www.linux-hacker.net/cgi-bin/UltraBoard/UltraBoard.pl?Action=ShowPost&Board=idot&Post=76&Idle=0&Sort=0&Order=Descend&Page=0 02-19-2004 22:26:52

RE:BIOS (Part II) (modified 0 times) Morris Profile Hi Guys. I bought a dot-station last week and finally got W98se on the system. for upgrading on PIII800 and 128mb, could anybody give me a short brief, how to update the bios? should i use the bios5 , or the abaz? appreciate your help. tks Hans 04-25-2004 23:16:59

RE:BIOS (Part II) (modified 0 times) Morris Profile what means unlocked, and how do i know whether my station is unlocked or not ? the board is a D810emo, 300celeron, 10GB HDD.tks hans 04-26-2004 01:10:14

RE:BIOS (Part II) (modified 0 times) jsmmd Profile It's unlocked if you can get into the bios on boot-up. Also, if you have the units that boot into the "Intel" OS, then they are most likely locked. Can you get into the bios? 04-26-2004 18:13:06

RE:BIOS (Part II) (modified 0 times) Morris Profile Tks for info. I can go into the bios and the screen shows me the celeron logo, not the intel with the green.... whatever it is. 04-27-2004 10:10:08

Reply to Thread | Printer | All times are PST Powered by UltraBoard v1.62

I-Appliance BBS General - NEWS, Breaking NEWS - linux-hacker.net BBS on CD Questions - User Groups in Your Town - E-Bay, Yahoo Auction LINKS ONLY (MODERATED) - Jokes & Humor - usdtv box I-Opener Areas - I-Opener General Posts - I-Opener Technical Stuff - I-Opener Technical Info Reference (MODERATED) WebSurfer Areas - WebSurfer General Posts - WebSurfer Technical Stuff - WebSurfer Technical Info Reference (MODERATED) Other I-Appliances - Virgin Webplayer - WebPal - MailStation - 3Com Audrey - ThinkNIC / Oracle NIC - Gateway/AOL Connected Touch Pad - Philips/AOL-TV - ACER NT-150 STB - MSN Companion - Compaq IA - Emachines IA - IBM NetVista IA - Intel dot.station - MSNTV2 Network Computers - Fujitsu-Siemens Scovery Linux Net Computers - GallantWeb Server Consoles - Dreamcast - xbox hacking Web Pads - Epods One General Post - Panasonic CF-01 - Fujitsu Stylistic 1200 - Cybiko Thin Clients - Thin Clients DigitalVideoRecorders - DTV Recorders, Replay, TiVo, Etc... - Tivo Hacks Linux - Midori Linux General Board - ITX MotherBoards Single Board Computers - Earth Computers mARMalade Elite Member Area MISC Areas - The Swap Meet WE TAKE NO RESPONSIBILITY FOR ANY TRANSACTION HERE AND NO COMMERCIAL POST PERIOD !!! - Wireless Net - Cameras - Robotics - Routers/Gateways - Mattel JuiceBox