Dell bios, how to decompose / mod.

Discussion in 'BIOS Mods' started by wolf69, Nov 21, 2009.

  1. cfrank33

    cfrank33 MDL Junior Member

    Feb 12, 2008
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    Will be there soon a tool to mod the dell bioses which dont have slic or is it difficult ?

    .... hoping will be possible .....
     
  2. wolf69

    wolf69 MDL Senior Member

    Jul 29, 2009
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    sorry must have missed that lol ill get that tomorrow im heading out of town. was using a softmod but after restarting the pc it was no longer there lol
     
  3. Apokrif

    Apokrif MDL Addicted

    Dec 7, 2008
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    Don't know, really.
    [IMO]Among old models, there are few worth to run W7. Might be easier to do them manually, than bug Andy. He is quite busy anyway to spend his time on [mostly] useless mods.[/IMO] :rolleyes:
     
  4. en4rab

    en4rab MDL Novice

    Oct 27, 2009
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    Apokrif in an earlier post you said you had found the code that patches up the ACPI tables in the dell bios, could you give me some pointers to finding this, I have looked at the gx280 bios at it seems like the only solution to it is to move the RSDT table and change the RSD PTR but to make that work the code that fixes up the tables need to be patched to make it copy the SSDT adress to the new RSDT location, but sadly im not a coder so im having toubles with this
     
  5. andyp

    andyp SLIC Tools Author

    Aug 8, 2008
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    Hi

    I am more than happy to integrate your great work into the tool! You are doing a fantastic job.
    Can you PM me with the info, especially any special cases/warnings to look for.

    We will have to try and automate 2 as well, I will look back over the detailed posts you have made before.

    Andy
     
  6. cfrank33

    cfrank33 MDL Junior Member

    Feb 12, 2008
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    I saw the Optiplex GX620, the bios is although for the Optiplex GX520 ?

    I think they use the same bios both of the machines
     
  7. Apokrif

    Apokrif MDL Addicted

    Dec 7, 2008
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    Oh man. Writing program is fun, writing description is pain in the arse... o_O
    And thanks for the good words.

    Still not sure if it’s worth doing:
    Might be better to check first what old models can run W7 first?
    I mean be used with W7, not just run it.
    I think it’ll be about handful only at most.
    And Dell didn’t update BIOS for them – so one time mod is all we need.

    Andy, I do value you time. I think there are more interesting things to do.
    Therefore I post questions in this thread, not PMed.
    Could you weight and answer, please?

    Very next message will be the list of PC requested to mod.
    I suggest we wait 2-3 days to see how many we get.
    I’ll keep updating it for same 2-3 days.
     
  8. sebus

    sebus MDL Guru

    Jul 23, 2008
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    Dell Dimension 5100 could be a candidate

    sebus
     
  9. Apokrif

    Apokrif MDL Addicted

    Dec 7, 2008
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    Added.
    Have you patched your GX620 already? ;)
     
  10. en4rab

    en4rab MDL Novice

    Oct 27, 2009
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    #213 en4rab, Jan 23, 2010
    Last edited: Jan 23, 2010

    Attached Files:

  11. sebus

    sebus MDL Guru

    Jul 23, 2008
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    Yes, works like a dream even with PCI Express card (was worried that it might somehow not)
    Great work!

    sebus
     
  12. Apokrif

    Apokrif MDL Addicted

    Dec 7, 2008
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    #215 Apokrif, Jan 23, 2010
    Last edited by a moderator: Apr 20, 2017
  13. woolfie

    woolfie MDL Novice

    Jan 4, 2010
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    I only can tell that GX620 with 2 GB RAM runs very well with Win7 for such an old pc. Was just a try, didn't suppose it would work as well now.
    I'm really thankful about your work!
     
  14. en4rab

    en4rab MDL Novice

    Oct 27, 2009
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    #218 en4rab, Jan 23, 2010
    Last edited by a moderator: Apr 20, 2017
    Apokrif I rummaged through my recycle bin and found the first mod i tried.
    Basically i moved the RSDT to some free space further on in the system module, and placed the slic just after the new extended RSDT, then I blanked out the old RSDT with 00's changed the RSD PTR to point to the new RSDT table and change the machine identifier in all the tables to "M09 " to match the SLIC, including the string just before the old RSDT table as it looked like it related to the tables. So the system module now looked like this:
    System module (the first M09 is the string from just before RSDT
    Code:
    Offset      0  1  2  3  4  5  6  7   8  9  A  B  C  D  E  F
    00004BD0   84 C3 2E A1 C0 CB CB 4D  30 39 20 20 20 20 00 00   „Ã.¡ÀËËM09    ..
    00004BE0   00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00   ................
    00004BF0   00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00   ................
    00004C00   00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00   ................
    00004C10   00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 46   ...............F
    00004C20   41 43 50 74 00 00 00 01  00 44 45 4C 4C 20 20 4D   ACPt.....DELL  M
    00004C30   30 39 20 20 20 20 00 07  00 00 00 41 53 4C 20 61   09    .....ASL a
    New RSDT+SLIC:
    Code:
    Offset      0  1  2  3  4  5  6  7   8  9  A  B  C  D  E  F
    00007330   FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF  FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF   ÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿ
    00007340   52 53 44 54 44 00 00 00  01 00 44 45 4C 4C 20 20   RSDTD.....DELL  
    00007350   4D 30 39 20 20 20 20 00  07 00 00 00 41 53 4C 20   M09    .....ASL 
    00007360   61 00 00 00 1F CC 0F 00  00 00 00 00 93 CC 0F 00   a....Ì......“Ì..
    00007370   25 CD 0F 00 4D CD 0F 00  B4 CD 0F 00 F2 CD 0F 00   %Í..MÍ..´Í..òÍ..
    00007380   84 F3 0F 00 53 4C 49 43  76 01 00 00 01 8A 44 45   „ó..SLICv....ŠDE
    00007390   4C 4C 20 20 4D 30 39 20  20 20 20 00 12 0C D8 27   LL  M09    ...Ø'
    000073A0   41 53 4C 20 61 00 00 00  00 00 00 00 9C 00 00 00   ASL a.......œ...
    New RSD PTR:
    Code:
    Offset      0  1  2  3  4  5  6  7   8  9  A  B  C  D  E  F
    00006C00   52 53 44 20 50 54 52 20  00 44 45 4C 4C 20 20 00   RSD PTR .DELL  .
    00006C10   40 F3 0F 00 FF FF FF FF  FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF   @ó..ÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿ
    I shall reflash this to the PC and post some dumps of its effects in a few mins.
    en4rab
     
  15. Apokrif

    Apokrif MDL Addicted

    Dec 7, 2008
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    Well, GX620 direct predecessor of 745 and hardware are practically the same.
    745 already come with SLIC 2.0, therefore can be moded by Andy tool.
    So GX620 is latest/newest wave of OptiPlex pre-SLIC models.
    I meant there is, probably, no reason to mod models came before 2004, and might some in 2005.
    I have Dimension 8400, but see no reason fiddle… since I have XPS420.
     
  16. Apokrif

    Apokrif MDL Addicted

    Dec 7, 2008
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    #220 Apokrif, Jan 23, 2010
    Last edited by a moderator: Apr 20, 2017
    I think you did everything right.
    The most important thing – you didn’t brick it!
    Do you know any DOS memory browsing/dump programs?
    Or try to boot XP in safe mode and get dump.

    It I would be you, I’ll do baby steps only.
    1. I won’t zero old RSDT – no reason.
    2. I won’t put SLIC either.

    But it doesn’t matter much, I guess.