(UEFI) Dell XPS 15z L511z modded BIOS - and HOWTO

[TimeWalker]

You have probably used a badly patched version of IOAudioFamily as it's a known issue.. it implements some obstruction layer overrides to monitor the status of an external amplifier (EAPD). If the patch is implemented poorly in the sources then this happens when using patched AppleHDA. The sleep issues we were getting are not related to HDA in any way.

[jkbuha]

Yes you're right TW - I've replaced the IOAudioFamily kext and sleep has returned. So it was a red herring - sorry about that.

On a related note I've checked my DSDT memory assignments as outlined in your Sleep Howto and my Bios A12 DSDT OperationRegion maps are the same as your Bios A07. So I'm not sure if this will eventually fix sleep or not just by using DSDT edits. Just my two cents

[TimeWalker]

Yeah it did fix already, actually
I've reverted to original PlatformSmm module and did just the DSDT edits which I've proposed earlier and all is fine with sleep/wake cycle on A13 BIOS.

[kasar]

srry for the late answer, didnt had access to internet or laptop too much in those days and will still connect very few till next year ^^

yeah, this topic has been exciting
me and my laptop got really involved in this ^^
it has been a nice adventure, I like you guys

I hope our adventures will continue after xmas.

hope you all a happy xmas (:

[TimeWalker]

Bloody [censored] .. what a disappointment. The brightness bug surfaced again, this time with 2130 vbios. /cvar doesn't help.. It happened after booting osx with uefi clover, then booting legacy win8 and then osx with xpc. Upon booting with clover next time brightness controls borked on me :| I guess I need to reset cmos properly, not partially, but this is not happening until I upgrade to an ssd in mid January ...

Happy new years everyone.

Sent from my LG-P500 using Tapatalk 2

[jkbuha]

Sorry to hear your woes TW - is this because of clover's uefi booting though? if not, it may be the case why Dell has kept the laptops on v2104 vbios.

If it's any consolation I'm also going though some UEFI issues with clover. Can boot successfully into OSX with a UEFI USB, but Legacy Mode (PBR or LegacyBios) simply freezes when selecting Win8/Linux. Shame because I think the clover project has a lot of potential.

Happy NY (and NYE) everyone

[TimeWalker]

I think it's because of UEFI booting in general, even though Arch Linux and Ubuntu (Live CDs with Legacy Boot disabled in BIOS) can sometimes adequately react to certain key combinations that I have problems in OSX otherwise. So it may as well be a problem related to AptioFix and it somehow messing the actual NVRAM on the unit. How can you explain it accidentally breaking for no reason when only thing I had done is update the bootloader. I have tried using the stock factory VBIOS that Dell provides for our machines and it didn't help either.. I believe it's CMOS-related.. will see if I can install a switch of some sort, like @kasar did on his machine.

The legacy booting things is hit and miss really, especially on our crappy UEFI implementation.. I bet you BIOS emulation is not getting enabled hence nothing happens after you chose the volume to boot. In theory the EmuVar driver should hand the control to UEFI, and it gets looped somewhere. Legacy boot was never polished nor was it properly implemented. But actually I don't care about it that much, I will be trying to install Windows 8 Pro in UEFI mode when I get the SSD, to see if all the hangs and freezes related to QuickSet and Wi-Fi toggle people with L702x are getting are present on my Vostro. If it's fine then presto - I'm sticking with UEFI Windows and OSX multiboot, as soon sa I get an Optical bay that is.. postal services will still be crowded till mid February.

Also I felt like I almost lost my machine today lol .. that would have been bad considering I'm away for this holiday season. For some reason it occurred to me to flash the bios using the /v verify flag.. well, it didn't go very well to be absolutely honest with you. It flashed the BIOS region, then the EC.. and started checking, then buzzes like 3 times through the speaker saying verification has failed turned the screen off and remained sitting with fan going at full speed and kyeboard illuminated for 10 solid minutes, then it started beeping with high-pitched sounds to accompany the rest. I was unable to shut it by holding the power button, unplugging the power lead didn't help either.. so I had to pull the battery out (so never attempt doing the /v thing on your 15z lol or you will have to wait long enough until it dies on you) and after replugging it back in and powering on the unit it sure had a corrupted bios. Luckily, I had @kasar's magic disk in my laptop bag ...

[TimeWalker]

And well, [censored] that ... SCT 2.0 UEFI Booting any OS = utter crap!

1. No real NVRAM use for OSX, can't multi boot various OSes through means of Startup Volume in OSX, forced to use plist generating script.
2. Need special tweaked .efi driver to emulate variables in RAM ... hence you get the above. The driver occasionally fails to shut down the machine properly.
3. Pressing Fn+F2 in either Windows or OSX to toggle radio interfaces in UEFI mode locks up the machine. Linux doesn't exhibit such behavior.
4. Brightness controls get lost for no reason occasionally, no known way of restoring the functionality other than using a completely stock rom.
5. In Windows installing QuickSet or ST Micro accelerometer driver locks up the machine.
6. Sometimes Windows Boot manager screws up the entire NVRAM while setting itself as a boot option. Which results in non-working F2 and F12 keys.. the only way to revert is to boot Windows and reflash the BIOS with /cvar flag to reset NVRAM.
7. Dell uses outdated version of Phoenix UEFI SHELL Flasher .. like real outdated 1.5.2 while the latest is 1.5.66, no comment here. No way of starting a newer version because it requires Firmware update or crisis recovery boot mode to be initialized and we don't have access to UEFI booting in either of these modes.
8. Dell's outdated Intel VBIOS doesn't support resolutions higher than 1024x768, third party boot loaders look squashed. Implementing newer version results in weird system failures as proven by some 15z users attempting it.
9. If not using a custom VBIOS artefact appear all over the place in OSX, no proven way of getting rid from them...

[kasar]

as allways , brillant analysis TW!
thanks so much for the info, you provided, rep added ^^
as for the flasher, I has been adding the 1.5.66 version to the latest mods in the L502X topic for a while with 0 issues.
it seems dell's problem is that they have a very lazy guys, at least in bios/develpment.

I was wondering if it is posible to load external .efi drivers , for example from usb like you did using the efi shell, and then load the OS with the extra external efi drivers, it could be posible to do some OC related tweaks?
we could automate the process by adding the comands to the script file efi shell load at the startup automatically.

since the begining, I allways wanted to get a little more of juice from the cpu, but the machine is locked as heck related to OC >.<

also, clover doenst looks like an option since you have to [censored] the windows installation from mbr to gpt, and probably most users will refuse do do that since there is no posible rollback if something goes wrong.

glad to know the magic cd were usefull for u again

I am thinking of burning another version for me with a modded version instead a old stock version of the bios ^^

[TimeWalker]

This wasn't an analysis, more like a mad man's rant.. but all these quirks pissed me off hard. Never again am I buying anything computer-related from this company... well their monitors are quite good actually.

You have been adding a windows flasher that does absolutely nothing but calls for system sleep-resume and state boot mode change to firmware update, then unpacks the capsule and utilizes PFlash.efi packed inside the capsule to actually flash the firmware.. which is OLD and I have no idea how to pack a new one in as it's different structure-wise.

As for adding the .efi modules, yes you can mess with the firmware with FfsDxe.efi that unlocks write access to fw filesystem, but it can be potentially risky. There's a way to convert an MBR installed windows installation to GTP as someone over at @jkbuha's thread over at NBR mentioned, but you can't go back AFAIK.