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Home / I-Opener Areas / I-Opener Technical Stuff OT Need help writing pci option rom

OT Need help writing pci option rom (modified 0 times) QiJaH Profile I know some of you guys have the skills to program a bios insertable option rom for setting PCI registers. There is a very large community out there (via users) That could really benefit from a little memory tweaking. Of course this can be done with wpcrset, but the cleanest way would be through bios. device 0 reg 50: ff reg 51: ff reg 64-67 12 or 2a (for the less fortunate) Anybody care to help out? (Programmer, are you there ?) Thanks Hendrik 06-27-2001 10:52:50

RE:OT Need help writing pci option rom (modified 0 times) Programmer Profile Start with http://bethie.net/~programmer/bi4v.asm it is a commented assembler source file that can be compiled with nasm once you have fully tested the dos .com file that will be created, use http://bethie.net/~programmer/com2rom.zip (a windows program) to convert the .com file into a binary rom which can be inserted with cbrom into an award bios, or placed on a network card, etc.. cbrom <bios image> /isa <binary rom> at some point I will figure out why the ROMS will not work as PCI roms. though at present it does not matter as ISA roms work just fine. 06-27-2001 13:43:25

RE:OT Need help writing pci option rom (modified 0 times) QiJaH Profile Thanks! I'll see if i can figure some of this out ( i have no programming skillz, but posses logic, so i'll work on it.) hendrik 06-27-2001 15:38:05

RE:OT Need help writing pci option rom (modified 0 times) QiJaH Profile I need to free up some space in my bios (for msi 694d pro) to incorporate the option rom. Does anybody have an idea how to do that ? Also, can i output to file using nasm disassembler ? tia hendrik 07-07-2001 16:29:38

RE:OT Need help writing pci option rom (modified 1 times) QiJaH Profile double post 07-07-2001 16:29:48

RE:OT Need help writing pci option rom (modified 0 times) Programmer Profile you can use cbrom <bios> /d to see what's in your bios taking up all the space... , and yes, ndisasm supports output to a file with redirection.. :) ndisasm myrom.bin > myrom.dsm 07-09-2001 07:27:19

RE:OT Need help writing pci option rom (modified 0 times) Wild_Pencil Profile | Email First thing I'd blow away is any graphic images like the EPA Logo. Hopefully you're working on a 256k BIOS.. 128k images are kinda tight on space. NDisasm works, but it produces an awful BIOS disassembly. (I've tried.. ) Too many Stack-manipulation tricks that fool most disassemblers. Still.. it's better than nothing. -WP 07-09-2001 09:02:10

RE:OT Need help writing pci option rom (modified 0 times) QiJaH Profile I've been trying to release stuff from my bios, but no luck so far. Does it matter at which address i incorporate the option rom ? wild_pencil: Are you saying that i can use the dissasembled bios for analysis, but i cannot reassemble it to a functional bios ? Thanks for all your help guys! hendrik 07-10-2001 09:58:35

RE:OT Need help writing pci option rom (modified 0 times) Wild_Pencil Profile | Email Just a thought.. do you have Award "Medallion" BIOS, aka Award 6.x? If so, I think you might need an appropriate CBROM and MODBIN for that version. Regarding disassembly.. yep, trying to reassemble what a disassembler produces is painful. More efficient (time-wise) to use the disassembly as a starting point, figure out what patches you want to make, and hex-edit ORIGINAL.TMP with your patches. Of course, if you manage to get a good disassembly that can be reassembled.. then you can do WAYYYYY more than I've been doing -- you can insert code fragments at will, and not have to worry about skewing the byte offsets. -WP 07-10-2001 13:12:11

RE:OT Need help writing pci option rom (modified 0 times) QiJaH Profile I'm pretty sure i do. I've got the latest modbin (beta 6. something i believe). As for cbrom, i've not been able to find a version later than 1.3. That one actually seems a little flaky. The bios by the way is for a msi 694d pro dual board. hendrik 07-10-2001 15:23:00

RE:OT Need help writing pci option rom (modified 0 times) QiJaH Profile OK, I've got a .com file now that works flawlessly. The only problem now is incorporating it in the bios. I've used programmer's com2romp.exe to create the .bin file, but no matter what i try it does not seem to work from the bios (not with either /pci /isa or /other switch). i've been using cbrom2.01a. Help ? If anybody wants to look over the assembly source file, let me know ( hendrikdejong@yahoo.com ) Thanks ! hendrik 07-14-2001 16:13:50

RE:OT Need help writing pci option rom (modified 0 times) Wild_Pencil Profile | Email What kind of message are you getting from CBROM? If it's something like "Invalid ROM File", then you need to update the last byte with a checksum value. Even if you force the ROM attachment using "/other", some BIOSes will still reject the ROM if the checksum doesn't pass. -WP 07-14-2001 17:00:32

RE:OT Need help writing pci option rom (modified 0 times) QiJaH Profile It looks like cbrom is adding the file correctly (be it with /pci /isa or /option). If after this adding i check the bios image with the /d option i see that it is there. It has worried me that, when cbrom is adding the file, the progress counter only goes to 33 %. Since i don't get any other message, i actually thought that this was not a big deal, But is it ? (do you see a 100% when you add a file to a bios image ?) hendrik 07-14-2001 22:37:32

RE:OT Need help writing pci option rom (modified 0 times) Wild_Pencil Profile | Email I think that shows something more to do with either compression, or remaining space in the BIOS image. Should be OK. -WP 07-15-2001 12:52:20

RE:OT Need help writing pci option rom (modified 0 times) QiJaH Profile That's what i thought. Well, i'll just keep trying right after badflash sends me a new chip ;) hendrik 07-15-2001 14:01:04

RE:OT Need help writing pci option rom (modified 0 times) Programmer Profile QiJaH: try the original known working (for /isa) version http://bethie.net/~programmer/com2rom.zip . you really don't need the PCI features and they may be getting in the way. The PCI version apparantly requires that the vendor and Device ID match the vendor and device IDs on some piece of hardware on the PCI Bus. (I need to work on com2romp some more) 07-16-2001 11:11:12

RE:OT Need help writing pci option rom (modified 0 times) QiJaH Profile Thanks! I'll give it a try. Hendrik 07-16-2001 15:41:24

RE:OT Need help writing pci option rom (modified 0 times) QiJaH Profile YEAH!!! I finally got it. I did use com2rom, and all i needed was a newer version of cbrom (2.08 rather than 2.01a). Programmer: Thanks! hendrik 07-22-2001 17:23:35

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