tqhoang, Yep that's my fer real name. Thanks for the BIOS, but can you verify my interpertation of your install/deinstall text before I give this BIOS a try?
Sorry, apologize if that was offensive...I thought your username was that school-yard joke "Mike Hunt". Anyways... I highly recommend you get setup for BIOS recovery as noted in the text file. Have a USB floppy drive and a DOS formatted floppy disk with a known good (original or SLIC modified original) D610 BIOS HDR file named in to match "AZED???.HDR". Ex: AZEDA06.HDR For the testing, you need a DOS bootable media (USB floppy or USB memory stick). If floppy method, use the Driver-Free floppy maker from Bootdisk.com. For a USB stick, use the HP Storage Format tool and DOS files like "minidos" to format the USB stick. - Copy the D610_A06.exe (original BIOS flasher) and the bios.gz files to the DOS bootable media. - Reboot and press F12 to select your device to boot. - Run "D610_A06 -readgzfile" and reboot when finished. - If you get video, then the BIOS has a good chance of working fine. - Otherwise you need to do the BIOS recovery and we try something else.
No offense taken, I've had as much fun with my name as others have. One of my favorites is having myself paged or getting something signed to me. I gotta admit, it's pretty funny sometimes. I couldn't get my hands on a D610 with the ATI video card. I did get the chance to work on a somewhat flaky laptop with the Intel video and was able to load the A51 and reload the A06 with no drama. This un-flaked the laptop (touchpad inoperable) and my local laptop tech was pleased that I returned the laptop in better condition than lent. Soooo, tonight I will try out the A51 w/ATI BIOS on my wife's laptop and hope for the best. I should at least be able to get back to A06 if all else fails. If you don't hear from me, assume the worst.
Success is a funny thing. My wife got her D610 for free from work as they were getting new laptops and disposing of the D610s. I liked W7's ability to work with lesser (older) PCs and thought it would be a good way to update the laptop's appeal and usefulness (I'm very impressed). Things worked out too well and now she's using the laptop ALL THE TIME. When I came home from work last night she had her iPhone plugged into the laptop and was syncing her phone contacts to her Outlook contacts while updating the firmware/software on the iPhone. Well it took all night! 6 hours! Apparently she hasn't updated the phone since she got it. So to make a long story a little longer, no I didn't get a chance to try the A51 BIOS. Maybe tonight.
I was able to apply the "ATI" A51 BIOS last night and was greeted with an inoperable screen. It isn't the solution for the ATI video card. I was able to easily revert to the A06 BIOS (thank goodness for the practice). Now that I know there's no problem getting back to A06, I could be a good tester for this solution. Let me know when you are ready to try again.
For the most part, the Dell BIOS is made up of chained-modules that have a {Type, Length, Module ROM}. It's either the core BIOS or some extension BIOS that checks the hardware and decides whether or not to load the video card ROM. What I've done is simply replace individual modules or the entire chained-modules section...followed by some checksum updates. I don't know assembly language so I have no clue what to look for at the moment. Even using IDA free edition, it's still very foreign to me.
tqhoang , Why do not use the D810 ROM and mod it so it can support Intel Intel 915GM Graphics Card? We will have a perfect Rom with the no USB geometry problem of the D510, plus a 48 bit LBA suppout. Is that possible ?
I tried it, same result as you had with Mike, still no joy with either D610 with ATI graphics or the Inspiron 6000 with either graphics options.. ps, I had read in some forums that bios versions 1 or 2 older were working but that proved to be false as well, great efforts and work here. I will keep looking in and will try to help when possible, thx
Tried it with the D610 ATI version and there were major issues, suspect it would be even more difficult to add support for 915GM
Hi! I wanted to upgrade my d610. hyperlink doesn't exist any more. maybe you can give another hyperlink to bios file? Thanks
Use the link in my signature for the D610 A51 BIOS. The sendspace link should be working just fine...only the MDL links have been taken down temporarily.
Mr. TQhoang, A friend requested a new hard drive in an old D610. Little did I know of 48-bit LBA last week whenI found the new 250 GB HD was only seen as 137GB by the A06 Dell D610 BIOS. I found it apalling that Dell would not have offered a BIOS update long ago. Thanks to the good people on this forum and tqhoang in particular, his customized D610 A51 48bit-LBA SLIC upgrade worked flawlessly and the D610 now sees the 250 GB drive. Fabulous work and solution to a major headache. Congratulations and kudoes to you. Thank you so very much for something Dell should have done in my opinion. Michael King