Anyone know how to extract a Dell bios from the ****.exe?? How to modify the ROM?

Ailef, it's for you

 

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ailef, have you any USB flash drive?

 

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OK, I usually correct the other checksum as well. I guess the the flash program doesn't check the other checksum then? .... Anyways the bios.rom is the important part .. Can't wait to hear back on a few of the mods using your method

 

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yes, i have an USB key.

 

To say the truth, I don't understand, what "the second checksum" is.
Do you mean the four bytes before the last four?
How do you calculate this checksum?

 

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my understanding is, since they will be shipping out dvds for those eligible the more chances they will release a new bios.

 

I'd like to see the official instructions of upgrading to Win 7 Logically, there should be an obligatory step to update BIOS to latest revision to be able to activate se7en, imho ..

 

Yes, I explain in post #105, basically the HDR file in this case contains 2 roms (mine is bios rom and keyboard rom) You already know of the 54h byte header, then 2 Mb bios rom, then checksum... then this file has a 96 Kb rom, possibly also a keyboard rom. I copy both roms (without checksums or header) into a new file to calculate the additional checksum before the last four. then the checksum will change for the end of the file as well
You can verify this with the original file..

 

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Well, when they had the Vista upgrades they sent an actual retail disk with retail serial number. shouldn't actually require bios upgrade although they sent a bios upgrade on an additional driver disk....

 

Time will show which solution gonna be provided

 

shakeyplace, I read your post #105, but didn't understand that you have to copy both roms into a new file...
Maybe you're right in this case, we'll see soon

My D630 bios has two roms too. But I've corrected only control bytes at 200054, because the checksum of the whole file becomes correct automatically.

Hmmm. You're right, these are control bytes for 2 roms, I've just checked.
It's strange that I was able to flash a modified bios into my laptop then...

But now we know the structure of the .hdr file almost completely !!!

 

It may work anyways, you're right about that. That is where it comes from even if it is not actually required.. It is nice to know that it isn't required, that was why I passed up on the one mod, a very large hdr file (over 2 Mb) with only a 900 kb rom, if only the one checksum needs to be fixed it may be much easier..
I suppose that if the flasher checks the bios checksum and the checksum of the hdr file it must consider it valid. I suppose they just figured the other checks were redundant then

 

Yes, the first 54h is the 4 byte header, copyright info and version #, other than some with values at 3C and 3D ( I wonder if that has to do with some people being unable to use the -readgzfile switch) and with your work on the bios itself we may soon (hopefully) be able to edit the bios at will and flash it.. It would be nice to possibly unlock the overclocking, change boot screens and add processor support or even put SLIC 2.1 in a bios without SLIC 2.0, etc eventually
Sorry about being maybe over cautious about this, I have a mod prepared for my 6400 but am expecting a motherboard in next week to test on, I already bricked a couple before you came up with this solution (mine were similar to the bad flash posted on that chinese site, except I didn't post mine) and since I have the damaged board already coming for testing the flash I may as well wait, as hard as that is.

 

Do I need real DOS to use it? Or another update program which support that switch?
YES, real dos boot disk
You must not be booting from pure dos, I ran the commands with my boot floppy and got invalid rom size (I had bios.gz from 6400 on disk) so the flash file will accept those parameters, try again if you wish, if you still have trouble I can build you a bootable cd image...