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07-24-2020, 04:34 AM
Hi, I come to you referred from @Lost_N_BIOS from the Win-Raid forum.
We (mostly him, I barely understand the stuff) are trying to unlock all of the settings the BIOS for the A515-54G has to offer, and if at all possible changing the boot Acer logo for a custom one.
I have access to a CH341A programmer and I successfully made a dump of the ROM content from its Winbond 25Q128JVSQ chip (both through flashrom and AsProgrammer), after inspection of the board no other BIOS ROM chip was found, but I'll attach pictures of it as well and more if necessary. We were also able to unlock flashing through FPT (after vars editing through H2OUVE 2), which is preferable to be honest but if using the programmer is the only way to go I have no problem with it.
I'll be attaching both clean dumps, the one from the programmer and the one from FPT to this post as well.
The only change we were able to make to the BIOS successfully is updating the microcode for the processor (attached info on which one it is), the other changes didn't stick.
For example, I made a boot logo and replaced all of the Acer ones with equivalent (same format, same size, etc.) images. No luck, I keep seeing the Acer one at boot instead of the one I chose. I also tried swapping the Acer ones with those for Gateway (the BIOS comes with boot images for Acer, Gateway and PackardBell) to be sure they're as perfect match as they can be -> No luck either.
My guess would be that the logo I'm seeing at boot is located somewhere in the BIOS in another form, because I used the Linux' "file" command to locate all images and replaced any that looked as a boot logo. But that's where I'm out of my depth (same as editing the assembly itself).
We've been using UEFITool 25 to replace the menu section (DriverSampleDXE/SetupUtility) after editing and as far as we can tell, that's the right file. For another test, I tried replacing it with the one from 1.11 before the SATA operation mode was hidden under Ctrl+S at Main tab and it showed up just fine.
Summing up:
- The currently available BIOS is 1.18, no ME firmware is present in the BIOS nor was it ever upgraded manually.
- The appropriate BIOS from the 1.18 package is ZAW2, but having dumps from FPT or direct from the ROM it may not be needed after all.
- The only modification that was successful seems to be microcode updating, menu unlocking (the main objective) or boot logo replacement are not.
- The dumps attached are from 1.18 clean, without any modification whatsoever. Secure Boot, TPM, any kind of password, were disabled in BIOS. The only change is that the dumps were created after applied modified vars with H2OUVE to allow FPT flashing to be permanent.
Could anyone look at it and do the modding required please? We'd appreciate any pointers on what could have been missing, but if a successful mod is done we could possibly find out later on.
Thank you in any case for all your time and effort, trully,
Kao.
We (mostly him, I barely understand the stuff) are trying to unlock all of the settings the BIOS for the A515-54G has to offer, and if at all possible changing the boot Acer logo for a custom one.
I have access to a CH341A programmer and I successfully made a dump of the ROM content from its Winbond 25Q128JVSQ chip (both through flashrom and AsProgrammer), after inspection of the board no other BIOS ROM chip was found, but I'll attach pictures of it as well and more if necessary. We were also able to unlock flashing through FPT (after vars editing through H2OUVE 2), which is preferable to be honest but if using the programmer is the only way to go I have no problem with it.
I'll be attaching both clean dumps, the one from the programmer and the one from FPT to this post as well.
The only change we were able to make to the BIOS successfully is updating the microcode for the processor (attached info on which one it is), the other changes didn't stick.
For example, I made a boot logo and replaced all of the Acer ones with equivalent (same format, same size, etc.) images. No luck, I keep seeing the Acer one at boot instead of the one I chose. I also tried swapping the Acer ones with those for Gateway (the BIOS comes with boot images for Acer, Gateway and PackardBell) to be sure they're as perfect match as they can be -> No luck either.
My guess would be that the logo I'm seeing at boot is located somewhere in the BIOS in another form, because I used the Linux' "file" command to locate all images and replaced any that looked as a boot logo. But that's where I'm out of my depth (same as editing the assembly itself).
We've been using UEFITool 25 to replace the menu section (DriverSampleDXE/SetupUtility) after editing and as far as we can tell, that's the right file. For another test, I tried replacing it with the one from 1.11 before the SATA operation mode was hidden under Ctrl+S at Main tab and it showed up just fine.
Summing up:
- The currently available BIOS is 1.18, no ME firmware is present in the BIOS nor was it ever upgraded manually.
- The appropriate BIOS from the 1.18 package is ZAW2, but having dumps from FPT or direct from the ROM it may not be needed after all.
- The only modification that was successful seems to be microcode updating, menu unlocking (the main objective) or boot logo replacement are not.
- The dumps attached are from 1.18 clean, without any modification whatsoever. Secure Boot, TPM, any kind of password, were disabled in BIOS. The only change is that the dumps were created after applied modified vars with H2OUVE to allow FPT flashing to be permanent.
Could anyone look at it and do the modding required please? We'd appreciate any pointers on what could have been missing, but if a successful mod is done we could possibly find out later on.
Thank you in any case for all your time and effort, trully,
Kao.
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