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

[jkbuha]

however, what is the PXE boot module rom name in your bios? %somename%.efi probably
or if posible tell me the size of the old file, that probably will help ^^

Read my post again The filename of the plop rom (AD13024C-) is already renamed to replace the PXE rom. Just to double check your work; do a quick binary file search on which ROM files have 'PXE' in them more often, and the one that does (>20 times) is ~45k in size and is the PXE rom.

Interesting find re: W25X40FlashPartDxe....

[kasar]

ok, got following stuff working:

* intel vbios v2170 (patched the table and it works flawesly, external minidp and brigtress controls too )
* intel microcodes 0x29


* plop


anyway, I have some questions relating plop
this appears everytime I access the F12 boot menu or everytime I access F2 BIOS setup

also, network boot doesnt seems to work, everytime I enter in plop, and access network, it just reload the menu (it looks like it try to access the PXE boot, but since we replaced the PXE boot with plop, it just reload itself)


do this also happen to you?

I would like to keep network functionality in my machine.

if not posible, wouldn't be a way to launch plop from a hotkey like f9, like we did with the uefi shell from F10 hotkey?

after fixing this, I will focus on the bigger flash chip tests, however, there would be nice to check also the xxxxxxxFlashPartxxx.efi files , that could be part of the issue the BIOS doesnt show in bigger chips.

[TimeWalker]

Sorry break into this discussion. Anyone care to remind me about making integrated shell load by pressing F10? I think it involved replacing a fs drive?

Sent from Huawei 3C using Tapatalk

[kasar]

@tw

go to this page

https://www.bios-mods.com/forum/Thread-U...O?page=162

download ShellEnablerDxe.efi.zip from follow_me post

place the efi file into a usb stick and load it using the efi shell.

on reboot, you should be able to load the integrated shell by hit f10 key on boot ^^

the bad thing is that I dont know how to add this without the need of load the efi file, and also changes are loss if you do a cvar reset.

but well, it is better than nothing ^^

I also updated the integrated shell with a bigger size one, so it is nice to have it

[TimeWalker]

Thanks a bunch to both of you! Not sure how I missed it .. must've been really busy when this was posted.

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[jkbuha]

ok, got following stuff working:

* intel vbios v2170 (patched the table and it works flawesly, external minidp and brigtress controls too )
* intel microcodes 0x29


* plop


anyway, I have some questions relating plop
this appears everytime I access the F12 boot menu or everytime I access F2 BIOS setup

also, network boot doesnt seems to work, everytime I enter in plop, and access network, it just reload the menu (it looks like it try to access the PXE boot, but since we replaced the PXE boot with plop, it just reload itself)


do this also happen to you?

I would like to keep network functionality in my machine.

if not posible, wouldn't be a way to launch plop from a hotkey like f9, like we did with the uefi shell from F10 hotkey?

after fixing this, I will focus on the bigger flash chip tests, however, there would be nice to check also the xxxxxxxFlashPartxxx.efi files , that could be part of the issue the BIOS doesnt show in bigger chips.

Well done

Yes it has the same effect on my machine, but I'm assuming it supports network boot as I have patched it for the respective vendor & device ids (and importantly I don't have any way of testing network boot). If anyone does, please let me know.

[kasar]

I already patched vendor & device IDs, I also didnt had set a test PXE boot server, but I'm almost sure it doesnt work like it is, because with the PXE , it started waiting for the DHCP server and other stuff, and while entering on the network option in plop, it just reload itself, that makes me to consider if remove plop and load the default PXE rom.

EDIT: I think Plop is a cool feature we can add to our bios, but not at the cost of killing current working features of the machine, I think the best way to add it, would be to add it on the firmware and then link it to a hotkey like it has been done with the uefi shell, F9 hotkey would be interesting, what do you think guys?

[jkbuha]

Fair point. I don't use PXE, and have usually needed more a failsafe boot manager in rom to access the right partitions.
That said, if there is another way to enable (correctly) network PXE boot using PLOP I'd like to know...

[kasar]

I think follow_me can help us with that if we manage to add the plop room to the bios, it doesnt matter if it is unlinked like the internal shell were.

he managed to write a small efi app wich added a executable, like the shell to the boot menu, he probably would be able probably do the same with plop.

aparently that altered some kind of stuff in cvar, so if we manage to alter the default options and add the extra boot entries, it would be interesting, specially for normal users wich just want to flash the bios and play, because they wouldn't need to run a external shell to run efi files in order to enable the aditional features.

[follow_me]

@TimeWalker, @kasar - on the same page kasar gave you , there is DXE driver, you can replace floppy driver and you will have shell enabled permanently even in recovery mode

Yep , I can help - but how about EDK's default bootloader from Intel ? I think it is better one to integrate (in sense of bootloaders), if you want PXE,I can make a driver to integrate PLOP loader