I was able to mod my bios with Pajero method. They release a new bios for my board. Modbin opens it and I can edit it with winhex, But the mod is not saved to the bios file. I retried my original and still the same. All of a suddon I am not able to do the mod. Any clues to what i am doing wrong? TIA jetman6
You are editing the RAM with winhex right? Not the ORIGINAL.BIN file! There are multiple instances of ORIGINAL.BIN code. You have to find the right one. It's often the second instance which is the right one to edit.
Yen, I am editing the ram. I did the mod once before. I had no issues. I am sure I did it right and my location is correct. I save the modded bin but when I check it the bin has not changed. I don't think winhex is saving it. I think it is resetting to the original before it changed it. I am almost possitive it's winhex. Wish there were another program to edit the ram! I have to do it this way because of the Gateway string location of e840. Thanks for your help jetman6 P.S. If you want to try the bios. (Note change bf to bin) hxxp://download.biostar.com.tw/upload/Bios/P490m828.bf
I am by NO means an expert here, but I am pitching in what I learned from working with Yen on the exact same issue. He is right, it is USUALLY the second instance of, I usually search for strings then... If you have the right one and save it in WinHex, you can Display Bios Message or other display options, and if you have it right then you will see it actually is there inside ModBin.
Sorry to interrupt here, but I seem to be having the same problem using Modbin6.exe. I open a bios file with modbin6.exe, then switch to winhex and open the FILE original.bin. After I edit and save my slp 1.0 dell string in winhex, I go gack to modbin6 and save(F2) the file. Then if I re-open the bios I just saved, Winhex the new original.bin file, My strings are not there. My analysis of this behaviour is that modbin6.exe needs to have my slp 1.0 string entered into it's actual memory. Did I get this right? If I understand you correctly Yen, I need to use Winhex Alt-F9 to edit the physical memory. Could you elaborate on this a little? I think discovering this thread might be what I need to finally get things right. Regards, jj
Ah yes, you suffer the same problem I did in the beginning. You can no longer, atleast on the bios' I have encountered, edit the original.bin manually then save. You have to edit it, first use modbin 2.04.01 (newest one and supposedly holds the current structure best), open the bios file, then using winhex, look for the info in the physical ram. I have noticed the NEWEST modbin6 doesnt use the same name within memory. I named it ModBin6-2-4-1.exe and that is what it shows up as in physical memory. So yes, you have to edit your settings from within physical memory. You will notice its in memory twice, usually the second instance is the one you have to edit. You can find out if you edited the right one by checking "Display Bios Message" and if you see your edited info in real time then you are good to go.
Thanks for the quick reply.. I am using version 2.01.02.. I just got version 2.04.01. tks... Regarding the real memory editing, I just tried the following and want to confirm what I did was correct. Assume I want to change a character string located at location 01E62 in the original.bin file that reads Phoenix-Award to Dell System. While the file is opened in Modbin6-2-4-1.exe, - I start up winhex and Alt-F9 to edit memory - I expand the Modbin6-2-4-1.exe #xxx entry, and select the item named Primary Memory in the Winhex "Edit Main Memory dialogue and click the OK button. -This opens a memory window tab named Mod6-2-4-1rimary Memory -Now I search for Phoenix-Award and find it. -Then I press F3 to search again and find it a second time. -I change this memory location to Dell System (in my case) and terminate Winhex. -Then I go to the mod6 window choose the Display BIOS message option. Now I see my edited string (Dell System) in the upper portion of the displayed BIOS message. -I press F2 save it, with a new name. Now I reopen the bios I just saved with modbin6, still see my (Dell System) string when I choose the Display BIOS message. So I guess all is well at this point. Lastly, Is there some trick to avoid the !Function Disabled! message when I choose the "Plug in Utility" option in modbin6.exe? Regards and thanks for your help., jj
Looks like you got it working just like I do with the memory mod for modbin6, only thing is, you are editing the actual spot that MAY mess up newer versions of winflash and awdflash, since they seem to check things and give errors like "This is not an Award bios". There are older versions you can use but this is just a heads up. What I actually suggest doing is, see if your bios has a "Bios Message" like in "Change Bios Message", if nothing is there, you can add something and save it, I actually nave never edited the bios message in modbin but within ram. Just a preference... But I suggest NOT to edit the actual "Phoenix - Award" strings since it can cause other programs to no longer function. Stick to editing the Bios Message and you will be good in 99% of the cases, since the two are within like, maybe 2 lines of hex from each other anyhow and most of the OEMs give a lot of space around it. Oh and for the function disabled, I think we all just live with the fact that we use cbrom (182 in this case) manually via command line.
Thanks for the reply, Your point about changing the BIOS message in memory vs in Modbin6 is well taken. Not trying to beat a dead horse here - just sharing some information that might be usefull to others. I've reviewed a half dozen tested bios's from the tested slics area, and see that f0e62 has been used by many modders for the Dell System SLP 1.0 string. Dell SLP's only use a couple of small address locations. It also happens that I am using a fairly modern system Gigabyte EP35-DSP3 with the latest bios and that is where Fzeven put the Dell string. On this bios, I didn't flash it using the standard xxflash utility. Instead I used the Gigabyte "Face Wizard program", to open the modded bios file, make a small change to the default bios picture, then wrote it to the systemboard directly. I picked this approach because I noticed that the face wizard program uses cbrom.exe to do the actual picture replacement/manipulation. I suspect when the face wizard program loads a bios file from disk, it might do some extra bios validity checking. At least I know the modified main bios module made it through the cbrom process under the control of the face wizard program. (Something I have not been able to do on my own, with cbrom by itself) Now I am tryng to do an old P4 bios, and the copywrite at 0fe000-0fe0c0 Is nearly identical to the more modern Gigabyte bios. Here is the old (to be flashed) bios Award ........IBM COMPATIBLE 486 BIOS COPYRIGHT Phoenix Technologies, Ltd...p...q.....F....... C.Dell System j BIOS v6.00PG..2.3.5.8.<.A.G.N.war.Copyright (C) 2001, Phoenix Technologies, LTD.afModel: Here is the new (already flashed) bios Award ........IBM COMPATIBLE 486 BIOS COPYRIGHTAward Software Inc....p...q.....1.ard So.. ... C.Dell System FzBIOSv6.00PG..2.3.5.8.<.A.G.N.war.Copyright (C) 1984-2008, AwardSoftware, Inc..aOEP35-DS3P F3.. I'm hoping that my approach for the modding the old bios here works. Regards, jj
modbin I'm unable to extract the 'original.bin' file, modbin says 'BIOS version not 6.0'. Anyone know how to tackle this problem? I'm using Windows 7, tried compatibility mode and several instances of the program.