HOw Hard is it to Write your own BIOS ?

[Jimmy Question]

Obviously not the whole thing, but is it possible to "customize" your BIOS just for yourself. I have a list of things I would like to have in the BIOS for my RS482 that do not seem to be available.

 

First & foremost, I would like to have control over the default settings, so that when the CMOS gets reset, it at least goes back to a state that is MOSTLY functional, instead of the bleeding remnants of the back-alley abortion that it defaults to now.

 

So I wonder, how hard can it be to have a feature "On" instead of "Off", or "Enabled" instead of "Disabled" (or "disbaled" as it is in my case). Is there a software that can be used to modify a BIOS, or do you need to know how to read 1's & 0's ?

 

Second, the "Infinity" logo on Boot for this M/B is EXTREMELY lame. Like DFI hired a local kindergarten to do the "art" for this board. Can you alter the BIOS logo ?

 

Finally, why are the "performance" settings always SO BAD ? And the "optimal" settings are also BAD. Has anyone, ever, in their entire computer configuring career EVER used either of these settings and thought "Wow, that was so fast and convenient. Thanks DFI !!" (cheesy grin & fade out)

 

NO, no one ever uses either of those settings so why then bother to put them there? Or, if they are going to be there, how about letting ME decide what's "optimal" ???

[Wild Thing]

PM Tmod he mods bios's.

[Guest Tmod]

Obviously not the whole thing, but is it possible to "customize" your BIOS just for yourself. I have a list of things I would like to have in the BIOS for my RS482 that do not seem to be available.

 

There are some settings you can set to whatever is available in the bios

 

First & foremost, I would like to have control over the default settings, so that when the CMOS gets reset, it at least goes back to a state that is MOSTLY functional, instead of the bleeding remnants of the back-alley abortion that it defaults to now.

 

Same answer as above

 

So I wonder, how hard can it be to have a feature "On" instead of "Off", or "Enabled" instead of "Disabled" (or "disbaled" as it is in my case). Is there a software that can be used to modify a BIOS, or do you need to know how to read 1's & 0's ?

 

Not hard at all, Just Google for a program called Modbin

 

Second, the "Infinity" logo on Boot for this M/B is EXTREMELY lame. Like DFI hired a local kindergarten to do the "art" for this board. Can you alter the BIOS logo ?

 

Yep that is usually no problem, There are color limitations though.

 

Finally, why are the "performance" settings always SO BAD ? And the "optimal" settings are also BAD. Has anyone, ever, in their entire computer configuring career EVER used either of these settings and thought "Wow, that was so fast and convenient. Thanks DFI !!" (cheesy grin & fade out)

 

I have no idea why the default or optimized settings are set to the value they are.

 

NO, no one ever uses either of those settings so why then bother to put them there? Or, if they are going to be there, how about letting ME decide what's "optimal" ???

[p0tter]

I am using the "optimal settings" and have no problems. I am going to be moving the dual-core to a NF4 LP board. I ORTHOS'd for 4 hours, and have not run into no stablility problems and have played some WoW, WC3 and DVD-shrink. Everything is running at stock speed fine.

 

I would becareful with flashing custom bios, be ready to have someone hotflash your chip or have an extra.

[Guest Tmod]

I would becareful with flashing custom bios, be ready to have someone hotflash your chip or have an extra.

As a general rule custom bios's are not any more dangerous to flash then the box stock original.

 

Flashing a bios has to be done with care no matter where it came from.

 

Tmod

[Severance17]

How do you change the logo?

[Jimmy Question]

Okay, I've been playing with my own custom BIOS for a while. At one time I was able to modify the factory BIOS so that the "Optimal" settings were changed more to my liking. That was several weeks ago.

 

Now I have found some more I would like to change, and for some reason cannot duplicate the successful method I found last time by "trial & error".

 

I have 3 versions of ModBin; ModBin, ModBin6 and ModBin6B (Beta). None of these work now. ModBin6 is the only one that acutally loads the BIOS and allows me to navigate and change things, but it errors out on the Save.

 

The newly customized BIOS LOOKS good & modified (the date/time stamp is updated), but when you flash it you get the same old settings from it's unmodified state.

 

To add more variables, I had problems with Win98 & WinME DOS. In part because one (or both) of them would not read NTFS drives. Also because you couldn't fit the boot files, the ModBin executable, the old version of the BIOS and still have room for the new version.

 

So what I did was take an old 3 Gbyte drive, format it FAT32 and work off of that one. But I can't remember if I booted (successfully) last time with Win98 or WinMe DOS.

 

And I can't remember if I ran ModBin from the C: drive, or from the RAMdrive that the DOS disks create.

 

Anyways, any help from someone more familiar with this stuff would be much appreciated. At least "rule out" methods that are definately not going to work.

 

The only thing I can offer to help myself at this point is my belief that whatever error is happening is happening during the "save" process. For some reason ModBin's output is not overwriting the existing file.

 

Could that be it ? I am using the "old" BIOS name "Test2" and saving it with the same name "Test2". If I output with a different name, might that work ? (Just occured to me right now, I'll try it in a bit.)

 

Also, I noticed that a whole bunch of ".bin" files are there that didn't used to be, with odd, temporary-sounding names with underbars in the alphanumeric sequence. Could this be evidence of a failed save, or is this normal leftover trash from ModBin ?

 

Any help appreciated, & thanks in advance,

 

 

Jimmy

[Jimmy Question]

I just spent another hour or so experimenting, with no luck, unfortunately.

 

Last time I tried running Win98 DOS, this time WinMe.

 

I tried all three versions of ModBin (mentioned above) from both the FAT32 HD and the RamDrive and all of them failed.

 

ModBin6 (again) allowed me to navigate & "change" settings, but it errored on the save each time. Noticed that the errors were all different. Sometimes the text would get lost in the colors of ModBin when it exited, so it was not possible to read the text of the error message, but I was able to read one of them:

 

File _EN_CODE.BIN can't open. Thanks for using ModBin 2.01.01

 

Pieces of the other error messages all seemd to have the same "theme"; that there was problems "opening" (or getting access to) the temproary "working" files of ModBin6 during the save process.

 

Any ideas ?

 

Jimmy

[Jimmy Question]

Still trying to get ModBin to work again. Any help appreciated,

 

Jimmy

[Aeka]

That ver of modbin is a pos, but it is the latest on the net for the public tweakers .

 

It does work, but like you've noticed, it's very bugg in the menu's and it won't save a file sometimes.

 

 

The trick is to remove the temp files before you run it , from previous runs.

Also saving as a diff name might work better in that ver I'm not sure off hand.

 

 

Like I said though, it's menu modding feature's are a bit wacked, sometimes working out somewhat, other times totally corruptiong the bios, or apperently, from what you say, not doing anything.

 

 

There is another way, to doit all by hand.

That's not as easy though.

 

I can rename stuff.

Repack, etc all by hand.

Not using cbrom or mobind, even fix the checksums in the lha's, and the bios'es bbss.

 

There's also the lha original file name and date...

Name length, etc etc.

 

 

What I have'nt gotten around to is maping how changing defaults.

I've done it by hand once some time ago, I've just been to lazy to do any real work in asm for it in my tool thingy.

 

 

 

Anyways to make this short.

I'd reccomend you do the cmos save thing for now.

For a medium, everyday setup (the highest, stable at all times settings no matter what sort thing lol).

 

So you can at least jump to some halfway useable settings (I know what you mean, the defaults are allways lame in any bios).

 

The defaults are determained by of course, if they're hardset as a default.

If they are auto by default, they read off a table of settings.

 

There could be multi tables of settings, each for diff bins of memory (baised off tCK straight up, the lower this is, the lower youre timings will be until they hit the min supported timings in the spd).

 

Usually the bios doe'snt totally follow the spd.

Lol, actually, it can decide to outright ignore the settings(because it was not programmed to even look them up in the 1st place.., not good, but ohwell).

DFI boards do some ignoring too...

 

Btw, before I take off here...

Modbin, even if it's working 100%, it allways corrupts the living heck out of the bios.

It'll flash for sure, if modbin worked right.

But like I said, it's never the same again, never.

Still, it's not a totally bad thing to do (as long as you got a mobin ver that is working good for your bios).

 

The last "good" ver of modbin was: 1.00.38.

It won't work on your board I'm betting...

Any ver above this is way way buggy(totally not useable).

That last ver, the one you're using now is halfway useable though, but barely.

[Jimmy Question]

Thanks Aeka for "getting it"; the idea that the "optimized" settings in BIOS suck, and changing them to a known stable set-up is a useful & time saving after a CMOS clear is necessary. Everyone else I tell this idea to just sort of "yawns" as if it's old, dumb and boring.

 

I think it's brilliant. (Looks around for the icon that slaps itself on the back....)

 

Deleting the temporary files was one that I had but didn't try. Going to try that next and see what happens...

 

Oh, and experimenting with "NTFSDOS" so I can boot from floppy instead of the FAT32 HD I made, and access all the programs & files on my NTFS drive. Even seems to recognize my SATA drive.

 

Problem, executing ModBin results in "not enough memory" error.

 

Any ideas ? I was thinking I would have to mess with EMM386 or something. (Been years since I've cracked a DOS manual....)

[Aeka]

I'm not sure....

 

This newest modbin(the one you have) does run and save files in windows(nt), but I don't know if I would realy on that one (but it does actually doit).

 

I've heard the the older ones will too if you right click, set a compatibility mode thingy...

But I would defnelty not realy on that one.

 

 

I use dos personally.

 

Win95b-c and winme dos(win2k3 dos actually, same thing allmost) work fine.

No extras needed at all, no himem.sys or em386(or umbsys).

I think me dos has himem built in though, it seems like it does lol.

 

Anyways it's "supposed" (remmember I said this later ver is little quirky) run straight up in those, 98 I'm sure would be ok too.

 

 

If you have dos support on your sata you're all good.

The sil 3114/a controllers have dos support at least in ide mode, I dn about the raid modes.

 

 

I have probs once in a while with all sorts of diff apps not runnign at all on my ntfs partitions, in windows.

I dn why really.

When I run into an app like that I throw it on one of my fat16 partitions and they run fine.

 

I dn if modbin is such an app or not.

Probably is, a seccy...

 

Hmm it runs...

A seccy...

 

It won't run when I throw it a few dir's deep though.

 

I'm sure fat32 would be fine if you did that.

However, if the hd is small enough (just under 4gigs), I'd set it up as fat16, whatever floats your boat .

 

 

Make sure it's something you can get access to if you're screwed over.

I mean, after a bad flash, when recovering with a 2nd chip, ensure it's something you can access right away to re-flash the original chip asap.

 

 

Also, allways re-open the bios with modbin after modding it.

Unless you're absolutly sure abut it...

Like if I used my tool to make a bios, I woudl check it a few times when wokring on the tool, to see if it was modbin compatible (seeing if I can make a 100% original is half the job).

 

In the nromal ways though, cbrom and modbin, you shoudl allways try to open it up afterwards in modbin.

To see if it'll load it up, if it does, just exit without saving.

 

I've had modbin kill bios'es(probably actual instability back in the day) after moving menu's around to much :.

Plus the fact that any modbin can be a bit quirky even if your stable(it epends on what you try to do or try to view even with it)(yes even viewing can screw it up sometimes so take steps).

 

That's why I say to do that.

 

 

Taking steps...

Use modbin to take a look around at what you want to do, figuer it out and remember exactly what you want to do with it.

Then exit it.

Then re-open the bios, and do that, and only what you wanted to do, no pit stops .

 

Then of course double check...

Remmember sometimes you have to take a few steps at a time to track down oddities with modbin's mods.

You can allways mod that modded bios more after it's verified.

 

 

When flashing a bios....

No one seems to listen to this though :.

 

awdflash bios.bin /py /sn /wb /cd /cc /cp /LD

 

Keep a working bios on hand next to the modded bios too.

So yo can get access to it, and quickly if you mess up and have to use a 2nd chip to get back.

 

When flashing a dead chip, flash twice, sometimes you need to flash it 3 times it seems, but that only happened to me once, 2 times is good and it should allways be done on a dead chip.

 

Three's a cmd string for awdflash to exit to doss after flashing but I dn off hand what it is.

I just use F10 .

Instead of F1 I think it was to reset.

(Just hold he right arrow and it shoudl re-complete the previous cmd for yeah to flash again , if not, type it out again, or run the batch, whatever you do)

 

 

Just a few more things .

NEVER EVER enable bios flash protection and try to flash, it ALLWAYS kills the bios.

If there's a such thing as a stupid bios option, that is it ^^.

It does'nt even protect agaisn't corrupted bios'es or anythign, it just waits for ya to try to flash it lol, and it kills the bios :.

 

Also remember to enable usb keyboard support if you have one, before you go into dos to hotflash(if needed to hotflash).

It kinda sucks to get all there way there only to find out you can't do a thing :.

That is if it's disabled by default.

 

 

There is one more thing I can think of.

I can't stress enough how handy a 2nd chip is(one that has a working bios on it of course).

Even if you're not ocing, or modding.

It can be usefull out of the blue with any mobo(as long as it's meant for that mobo of course lol).

I moved a rig to my graparent's house way back now, when I got kicked out of my mom's.

Worked fine over my mom's, got to my graparen'ts and for some reason, a corrupt bootblock.

I know enough not to stick it by speakers and stuff like that.

I did'nt mishandle it, it just died.

And when a bootblook msg pops up on you ^^, you have a 50/50 chance to recover from a floppy(and only a floppy).

That is if the bootblock is even working, and like I said, half the time it is'nt(it's not the floppy you have to worry about lol).

 

Luckly I had a board with a dual bios socket setup, and I had a 2nd chip allready in it all ready since I modded the thing once in a while.

 

 

Do yourself a favor .

Get a 2nd chip.

It's one thing to wait for that 2nd chip, but waiting for that 2nd chip when your rig is down, not even knowing if it's gonna wok out, really sucks :.

Trust me on that one, even if it's only a week or whatever, get that 2nd chip before you kill the bios (not saying you will at all, but you really should get one, even if you're not modding, this is defently the type of board that you want one with(not to say anything bad with dfi, peopel's...)).

 

You get that 2nd chip and it's finky :, that sucks (happened to me, it really sucked, took me hours to get it to boot).

So get the 2nd chip, flash it twice, and verify it .

 

 

I believe Tmod is the man you want to talk to about bios chips .

(See if he's got sst lol, I dn if he does or not, sst are good ones, they have speed grades too btw(so does pmc)...., my sst is a 33mhz chip, it's pretty quick, there's faster one then this too, I don't know what he's got though and anything is ok for a 2nd chip even if it is winbond or pmc)