But if the bios was correctly modified, then wouldn't it boot off the flash drive like the unmoddified bios does?
You were right, the modified bios I created with phoenixtool185 flashed correctly, even though it wouldn't boot off of a flash drive like the un-modded bios. I flashed it via m-flash from within the bios. Once I saw that the motherboard has a backup bios chip, and I saw it work cause somehow I screwed up the first one (bios led was blinking - means using backup bios). I was able to clear the bios, fix the 1st chip, and then I took the risk and flashed the modded version now that I knew backup works
Note concerning SLIC 2.1 modification on new ACER bios. note to moders, Starting with Acer Aspire 5552G 2.13 and Acer TravelMate 5740 1.23 a new SLIC protection/activation have been put in place by ACER. How to recognize these bios: When AndyP tool pause at the end of bios dump, we can see that the tool inform of 2 empty modules. View attachment 9525 8325948F-03E7-468E-96D8-7A8639AA8B54_1_738.ROM and A4E128E7-3D90-4BAA-B6C9-714C6B95AF40_1_741.ROM in this example, The name of modules may differ with the model. 8325948F-03E7-468E-96D8-7A8639AA8B54_1_738.ROM have a size of 156 octets and must be filled by ACER pubkey Code: 00 00 00 00 9C 00 00 00 06 02 00 00 00 24 00 00 52 53 41 31 00 04 00 00 01 00 01 00 B3 6D 83 60 8D 83 65 6E E6 4B A7 6F 38 04 31 C1 E2 45 BF 34 66 1F 17 91 7F 5C 15 12 B7 01 4D 57 6D 8E AE 6B E4 CC F8 A0 E1 BB 79 FF 08 53 E3 77 E7 D4 70 5E 5C EF 6F 81 DD 1B 5F 30 E2 99 9B B9 D0 93 46 AB D8 17 7A E0 F0 A7 4C 32 D4 91 86 BA A1 6C A2 3C 73 CF 86 2D 95 9A 06 50 F3 F7 7E 06 5B 5E 27 66 01 3A 31 9F 0C B1 91 96 49 5C CC 81 BA 77 32 52 B2 10 5D 5B CA DE 9D 25 90 95 F7 97 A4E128E7-3D90-4BAA-B6C9-714C6B95AF40_1_741.ROM have a size of 182 octets and must be filled by ACER marker Code: 01 00 00 00 B6 00 00 00 00 00 02 00 41 43 52 53 59 53 41 43 52 50 52 44 43 54 57 49 4E 44 4F 57 53 20 01 00 02 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 49 90 AC 34 3B 98 88 52 62 2C FB 25 A8 A9 A0 7D 2D 12 70 EE D5 9A 7C CF 0C 83 B4 29 1B 55 3B 88 A5 F7 E6 29 A9 2C E7 17 5D 7A EE 38 4D 27 E0 A9 69 7C FC 20 4A 68 0B 5D 83 AD E5 D6 6E 49 C1 66 28 E4 D4 CE 72 64 A1 7C BE 93 AD 64 32 DA CC 72 24 47 FE B4 97 87 01 55 A0 5D 2F EF 06 93 E8 87 84 59 D3 9B 25 53 27 E7 CA 75 65 CF 0E 40 C9 3B AA 03 F2 83 7E 27 E7 CA 47 A4 4B 1F C5 77 DF 8C These 2 modules are in a protected zone of bios, platform.ini must be modify as follow: [ForceFlash] ALL=1 and option /all must also be used for flas**t DOS utility. Hope that will help. MDL SLIC team
Yes please TTAV134, the old link seems to be broken, and your's is the only unlocked Compal NBLB2 BIOS! Thank you very much!!!