Bios Mods -The Best BIOS Update and Modification Source

Do I need the CH341A or the TL866CS?

(08-15-2014, 07:36 AM)BDMaster Wrote: [ -> ]

(08-14-2014, 11:34 PM)philetus Wrote: [ -> ]Is it necessary to disable the antivirus to download and use the backup tool?

Yes only to run to avoid a false positive !
Regards

never mind

Good News,

my u430 now runs with rehabmans patches and everything is working fine. I am using a broadcom bcm94352HMB under osx just now. PmPatch is working too.

While removing the bios chip i damaged my motherboard but i was able to solder very thin wires to some points on the motherboard and got the new chip connected.

I will upload some pictures and share more of my experience in the next few days. Had some problems here and there and maybe the next one crazy enough trying to flash his bios using an external programmer can benefit from it.

Thanks for the great patches rehabman! I have a feeling that my bootup got faster (now it is really hard to hit fn+f2 to get to setup screen), is that possible? Does your patch disable the whole whitelist checking routine?


By the way, patches dont seem to work on the newest version from lenovo anymore.

And people who want ac wireless without hacking the bios could try a ngff card if slot is not occupied by a ssd. the apple one is on ebay: http://www.ebay.de/itm/BCM94360CD-NGFF-A...MCIA_Cards&hash=item3f3aa8bb3a and i read somewhere that there is a lenovo and a toshiba bcm94352 card with ngff connector. but who knows if any of these work...

(09-25-2014, 12:45 PM)sebold Wrote: [ -> ]Good News,

my u430 now runs with rehabmans patches and everything is working fine. I am using a broadcom bcm94352HMB under osx just now. PmPatch is working too.

While removing the bios chip i damaged my motherboard but i was able to solder very thin wires to some points on the motherboard and got the new chip connected.

I will upload some pictures and share more of my experience in the next few days. Had some problems here and there and maybe the next one crazy enough trying to flash his bios using an external programmer can benefit from it.

Hey that's cool. Nice to hear. Now I need to get busy and order the necessary equipment (been busy doing other things).

Quote:Thanks for the great patches rehabman! I have a feeling that my bootup got faster (now it is really hard to hit fn+f2 to get to setup screen), is that possible? Does your patch disable the whole whitelist checking routine?

I always use the special (small) power button. I doubt the checking routines take any significant time, therefore unlikely to do anything to boot time.

Quote:By the way, patches dont seem to work on the newest version from lenovo anymore.

Is there an update newer than the first update they did?

Quote:And people who want ac wireless without hacking the bios could try a ngff card if slot is not occupied by a ssd. the apple one is on ebay: http://www.ebay.de/itm/BCM94360CD-NGFF-A...MCIA_Cards&hash=item3f3aa8bb3a and i read somewhere that there is a lenovo and a toshiba bcm94352 card with ngff connector. but who knows if any of these work...

Hmm...

(09-25-2014, 10:03 PM)RehabMan Wrote: [ -> ]

(09-25-2014, 12:45 PM)sebold Wrote: [ -> ]Good News,

my u430 now runs with rehabmans patches and everything is working fine. I am using a broadcom bcm94352HMB under osx just now. PmPatch is working too.

While removing the bios chip i damaged my motherboard but i was able to solder very thin wires to some points on the motherboard and got the new chip connected.

I will upload some pictures and share more of my experience in the next few days. Had some problems here and there and maybe the next one crazy enough trying to flash his bios using an external programmer can benefit from it.

Hey that's cool. Nice to hear. Now I need to get busy and order the necessary equipment (been busy doing other things).

Quote:Thanks for the great patches rehabman! I have a feeling that my bootup got faster (now it is really hard to hit fn+f2 to get to setup screen), is that possible? Does your patch disable the whole whitelist checking routine?

I always use the special (small) power button. I doubt the checking routines take any significant time, therefore unlikely to do anything to boot time.

Quote:By the way, patches dont seem to work on the newest version from lenovo anymore.

Is there an update newer than the first update they did?

Quote:And people who want ac wireless without hacking the bios could try a ngff card if slot is not occupied by a ssd. the apple one is on ebay: http://www.ebay.de/itm/BCM94360CD-NGFF-A...MCIA_Cards&hash=item3f3aa8bb3a and i read somewhere that there is a lenovo and a toshiba bcm94352 card with ngff connector. but who knows if any of these work...

Hmm...

Hi friend,
Thanks for report, but I haven't any idea about !
Only way is try It !
About Whitelist is Always possible to Modify as It only SW !!!
Only Intel 7260 gives problems, indeed Intel 7260AC work well
using Whitelist Patch Bios !!! (my experiences)
So don't buy the 7260, but the 7260AC (is for IBM/Lenovo)
Let me know
Regards

(09-26-2014, 03:02 AM)BDMaster Wrote: [ -> ]Hi friend,
Thanks for report, but I haven't any idea about !
Only way is try It !
About Whitelist is Always possible to Modify as It only SW !!!
Only Intel 7260 gives problems, indeed Intel 7260AC work well
using Whitelist Patch Bios !!! (my experiences)
So don't buy the 7260, but the 7260AC (is for IBM/Lenovo)
Let me know
Regards

I think you replied to the wrong post.

Quote:Is there an update newer than the first update they did?

There it is: http://support.lenovo.com/de/de/products...s/DS100450

Comes with a different flash program if i am not mistaken.


Now to everyone who wants to remove the chip from the mainboard:
Don't do it if you do not have the right equipment! I didn't and i damaged my motherboard (getting it to work again required really difficult soldering)

At first i tried to desolder the chip with industry grade flux and thin desoldering wick. I removed a lot of tin but the chip didn't came of and because of its small size it isn't possible to heat up one side of it get that of and then the other side (this would even apply force to the pads, which are incredibly damageable).
So if you want to cleanly desolder it you need someone with experience and a heatgun.
The other way is to cut of the legs, but for that you need very tiny pliers and be very cautious not to apply force to the pads. After that you could desolder pad by pad.

In the second case you need a new chip. You can find these on ebay. the only important thing is that they are W25Q64FVSS*, it doesn't matter if they are IG IQ or IF. My original chip was IQ and i bought IG. If someone wants to experiment a lot with UEFI Modding it may be good to buy a 8 Pin PDIP socket and the W25q64FVDA* . One could solder wires to the old pads and have the socket with the chip anywhere in the laptop. This way you could even exchange it without unscrewing the motherboard. (Heres the datasheet: https://www.winbond.com/NR/rdonlyres/05A...5Q64FV.pdf)

Before connecting your programmer be sure that you connected the right pins to the right places. Don't trust the picture in the flashing software (I did and my first chip nearly burnt) look for a little picture on your hardware as it will show the right way to connect.
Then dump your chips bios (Its important to dump your own! it holds your windows8 license key for example!)
Do the steps as rehabman suggested in Post #51 to patch the bios.bin you just dumped.
Then flash the patched bios to a new chip and solder this one to the board.


If you damaged a pad you can take a magnifying glass and follow the wires on the pcb to find an alternative spot to connect and solder a enameled copper wire to it (i took 0,2mm diameter). As you can see the soldering does not look very good. I don't have a soldering iron with such a thin tip and not so thin tin.


And this is what my motherboard looks like now:


Hopefully Lenovo never releases an killer UEFI update that would make me need to update the bios.

Hi friend,
You are awesome !!!
Good work to repair
Regards

(09-26-2014, 10:58 AM)sebold Wrote: [ -> ]

Quote:Is there an update newer than the first update they did?

There it is: http://support.lenovo.com/de/de/products...s/DS100450

Comes with a different flash program if i am not mistaken.

Eventually, I'll have the time to check it out...

Quote:Now to everyone who wants to remove the chip from the mainboard:
Don't do it if you do not have the right equipment! I didn't and i damaged my motherboard (getting it to work again required really difficult soldering)
...

Wow. Just wow. I think this particular task may be "above my pay grade" (I am a software guy... not hardware guy, after all).

One thing I'll to look at prior to this is to re-brand a supported BCM card as whitelisted Lenovo BCM. I will report back here if that works...

Hi,

i extracted the module where the setup utility sits in (FE3542FE-C1D3-4EF8-657C-8048606FF670_907) and used the IFR-Extractor(https://www.bios-mods.com/software-relea...extractor/) to analyse it. This gives you a list of all options available in setup, even the hidden ones. I found 1 interesting setting: BIOS LOCK
(after the Variable comes the ID and after that the hex-code representing the variable for modding the module)
We are able to modify any setting revealed through ifr-extractor without modding the bios through a special EFI-Shell with the command setup_var (the clover efi shell is not working). Heres the working one (its some patched grub) https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1832..._Shell.zip .
To see the current setting of a variable the command is setup_var 0x4ab
To set it to Off for example command would be: setup_var 0x4ab 0x00
Can anyone try if changing the bios lock setting unlocks anything? maybe giving permission to FPT flashing? For me it didn't worked, but i can imagine that maybe other things preventing write actions in my case (maybe because of *IG ship instead of *IQ chip or the resistor i shorted out while repairing my board) and i don't understand anything about SPI, QSPI, registers and so on.

So maybe someone else can try this method?

PS: Maybe Rehabman finds some other useful settings for OSX use on this computer in the IFR dump (i attached mine)?