More specifically, why can't they be modded? Apparently my Compaq notebook which runs an InsydeH20 variant can't be un-whitelisted. Within sp51202, opening "01604F14.BIN" with andyp's tool reads "Not Phoenix/Dell/Insyde/EFI BIOS". What exactly has Insyde software done here to make these ROM's unmoddable? I tried opening the ROM in a hex editor and can't really decrypt much of anything.
I was told on another set of forums that the newer Insyde BIOS' are compressed/encrypted (depending on how you want to look at that) in a fashion that has yet to be determined. As such you really can't get at the innards quite yet. I've got a HP DV7T-3300 myself and this has been my main problem with trying to swap out my WiFi card as well as putting an unused mini PCI-E slot to work. HP offered a OTA TV tuner originally but I don't have the antennea jack fitted for it making it rather useless an option. But a 16gb SSD would be really nice, if it wasn't a whitelisted slot. Plus you can't directly boot to the second hdd from anywhere but from a bootloader stored on CD or the first hdd. Wouldn't be a big deal except I encrypt my main hdd and I'm not really sure I want to risk losing my data because of a bootloader.
If you look in the HP_TOOLS partition, which is normally hidden, is a folder where the BIOS are kept for reflashing. You can modify these but InsydeBIOS.exe demands them to be signed. If seems to be possible to bypass it though. Post count is too low, so look here forums.mydigitallife.net/threads/22485-Digital-Signature
Indeed I have found the unencrypted BIOS in the HP_TOOLS partition, and it seems that AndyP's SLIC tools understand the BIOS, which is good news. The question I now have is, assuming I can locate the whitelist in a hex editor, how does one remove it? Am I simply deleting the references, or is there more to it?