Hi DA_G ,
i said that the insyde unlocking method will not be shared and i respect this decision taken by the person who discoverd this method as i really respect him .
But i can share any other information with you as the EC didn't has any relation with the unlocking method .
If you read the alienware 17XR3 throttle remove thread , you will notice thatthey flashed a04 from windows the made blind recovery to the A08 ,,,,,,,,,,, this has removed the throttle as blind recobery made EC fw lost controlling throttle temps that is found in DSDT table ( compal ec fw has a lot of problems in acpi , dsdt,,,,,etc ) so throttle wasn't read properly .
This glitch is not found here in the 18X so we need to modify the EC fw ,,,,,,,,,,,,, as i said i knew CMD commands for disalbing throttle in one of Comlal EC fw but don't knew if this is the same for all fw .
Also , i will edit the EC fw by reading values from DSDT today when i go home .
Finaly , i say again i will not share the unlocking method as i respect the one who unlocked it and i really knew the great effort he made in this method , i hope you understand this well ,,,,,,,,,,, you are welcome if you have info. About EC and can help us here or test .
Maybe Da G posted a pic with the ec. I did not reopen mine. If we are lucky Da G pictured it already. Thanks Da G for posting those.
Edit: I think everyone who uses the bios can respect that they are getting an unlocked bios thanks for the effort.
Hi Ahmed,
Actually I already responded about the unlocking method
here, I understand that you didn't want to share the info, and I respect that decision. But it seems odd that you wouldn't want to share it, as I already spent the time to learn the method myself, and it was already documented in public about a year ago here:
http://www.mattday.net/content/notes-hac...syde-bioss - just a link to that page would have been enough for me to understand it, but I found it on my own anyway, so it doesn't matter now
Anyway, the method is easily decipherable by reading the Intel EFI HII specification, it is only a simple modification of the EFI HII IFR forms, which are well documented here:
http://download.intel.com/technology/fra...II_9_2.pdf With the secrecy, I expected it to be extremely hard to decompile obfuscated machine code, perhaps even encrypted, but it turns out to be fully documented! Only one OpCode needs to be changed per menu, very simple. Not even a checksum to prevent modification!
It is my opinion that it is counter-productive to hide such information (especially that is well documented and posted public), but I could understand if it was some inside information like under NDA. I deal with that regularly. Anyway, it's hard to contribute my help when there is no open sharing of information. I hope bios-mods reconsiders it's stance on this as it only results in needless duplication of work, when instead others could be contributing towards the common goal.
Now, let's leave that behind and go forward:
I think I misunderstood what you meant by glitch, I thought you were saying that the EC firmware would not flash properly unless flashed through a specific method, but I see now that you mean through a glitch when flashing, the DSDT table became corrupt, causing the throttle to stop functioning. Interesting! As you said we need to identify the EC IC and get some documentation on it to proceed further. Fortunately we have a copy of the EC FW contained in the A03 BIOS, again not checksummed or encrypted, so modification should be a simple matter
I am comfortable with system disassembly so if the chip is not located anywhere in my photos (I did not examine them closely yet) I am willing to strip the system down again and locate the IC. (I will take detailed images of the entire system while i'm there to prevent the future need for disassembly)
Now I am starting work on a new tool to automate dumping and rebuilding of .fd BIOS SetupUtility.pe, with a GUI for manipulation of menus, register modification, etc. - this should work well with any Insyde BIOS. Are you aware of any documentation not publicly available that would be possible to share, on EFI spec or Insyde BIOS? Specifically, description of headers, structures, etc. - some of it can be found easily online but I haven't yet located a direct pointer to VSS table, for example. Currently in my program I am searching for VSS magic string $VSS and then parsing SetupUtility string table to build register map of VSS, then displaying to GUI. It works OK but possibly not compatible with some BIOS.
I guess, the ENE KB930QF might be the EC, but I'm not 100% sure about this and there seems to be nearly zero info about this part#. The other chips are for sure something else (LCD, audio, etc). I was hoping to find a datasheet for this one... I'll ask our hardware guys if they are familiar with this part, or maybe check our distis...
@Da_G: don't expect to find much information about BIOS internals. This is usually kept very secret (of course except EFI). But things like MRC and similar stuff are under the highest classification (e.g. BIOS writers guides and specs are Orange level classified at Intel, so to get such info officially requires a special NDA for which you need an Intel Vice President signature).. AMD is not so much paranoid about BIOS stuff.
(08-30-2011, 12:34 AM)Mumak Wrote: [ -> ]I guess, the ENE KB930QF might be the EC, but I'm not 100% sure about this and there seems to be nearly zero info about this part#. The other chips are for sure something else (LCD, audio, etc). I was hoping to find a datasheet for this one... I'll ask our hardware guys if they are familiar with this part, or maybe check our distis...
@Da_G: don't expect to find much information about BIOS internals. This is usually kept very secret (of course except EFI). But things like MRC and similar stuff are under the highest classification (e.g. BIOS writers guides and specs are Orange level classified at Intel, so to get such info officially requires a special NDA for which you need an Intel Vice President signature).. AMD is not so much paranoid about BIOS stuff.
more info seems to be some sort of a EC
http://www.ene.com.tw/en/product.asp
DA_G : you should knew that the unlocking method is found from couple of years ago in the MDY forum using the same PYTHON scripts (
which you have posted a link to it ) and the method is well explained there from the start to the end but i would like you to knew that i never used PYTHON scripts in unlocking the 18X...................also , this method is for unlocking options not Menus ( few people unlocked menus )..................if you were me , you should have respected the one who learned you this too not breaking your promise...............you jumped into the thread to only ask for the unlocking method!! please don`t make me get angry by these comments and i said you are welcome only if you want to test or help modifying the EC FW ............................ i have the full intel EFI documentation and the HII is just small part of it and this is easy to find too............finally , i will not reply to any other comments about this method so just leave this behind ( as you said ) .
MUMAK , thanks alot for the PDF and i will start reading it as soon as possible and let you knew if anything was found .
I`M SORRY FOR YOU ALL HERE AS I WILL STILL OUTSIDE HOME TILL FRIDAY ( I HAVE TRAVELED ) BUT I HAVE MY NOTEBOOK AND WILL WORK IN ANY FREE TIME I FIND .
Great PM me when your done modding the ec section and i flash it for you to give it a try i finally flashed your unlocked bios which is astounding!
Hi Ahmed,
It appears MyBB does not have a "delete account" function, could you please remove my account. Thank you!