(12-29-2010, 03:29 PM)Dansolo Wrote: New development for the 530 1.0.18 BIOS... experimental, though. I unlocked some options with modbin6, which corrupted the BIOS, so I extracted the _en_code.bin and _item.bin only and put them into a working version. I bolded that for the people that were talking about using modbin6. Do not mess with it if you're not prepared for the possibility of corruption and thus having to get around it like I did here. I don't know if the overclocking options will work but they should be there now, though there are only a couple of things unlike the 1.0.2...
I took the latest Intel AHCI ROM that I have, 1.20E.0027 and changed the device ID to correspond to the original ISA Phoenix AHCI BIOS device ID and fixed the checksum. I also enabled the AHCI option. I do not know if this will work due to changing from Phoenix to Intel AHCI.
RAID 8.7.0 ICH9 is in there and I know it works from a previous mod that I did that did not contain an AHCI ROM. It worked without needing AHCI. It is possible that adding a different AHCI version to this ROM will break RAID as well if it tries to load and fails.
I updated the VGA BIOS from 1471 to 1653 and the Intel LAN PXE ROM from 1.2.50 to 1.3.63.
I was going to update the CPU microcode but CBROM crashes when touching that. (It also corrupts the BIOS... good thing I made a backup before I tried this.)
This is EXPERIMENTAL. Try at your own risk! And make sure you have the appropriate system for it because there seems to be different revisions or something.
Aaaand here's one for 1.0.2... Took the ROM from the original post and:
-Enabled more options, nothing too special, and grabbed _item.bin and _en_code.bin with CBROM, again, to keep the BIOS out of modbin6's corrupting habits.
-VGA BIOS 1471 -> 1533 -> 1653 (found this 12/30, so I updated the file again)
-Realtek PXE 2.37
-RAID 8.7 ICH9. Don't know if it'll work.
-Same AHCI trick with 1.20E.0027. Don't know if it'll work. I don't even know if this ROM expects the same AHCI device ID, and would guess that it does NOT, so this part is probably even less likely to work here. Though a missing AHCI BIOS wouldn't brick a computer (hasn't yet in my experience, anyway). EDIT: I decided to just keep the same device ID but also add another AHCI ROM with the ICH9 device ID of 2923, so hopefully one of the two will work. File was updated a few minutes after I put the first one up.
Same caveats from the last post for 1.0.18. This is experimental! I do not own this computer and cannot test it!
First, let me start out by saying I would HIGHLY recommend breaking this into 2 threads.
This thread has the Inspiron 530b/530Sb in the OP, however, there is quite a split between Inspiron 530 models.
There are several variations of the Inspiron 530 and they break into two complete incompatible BIOSs.
http://support.dell.com/support/topics/g...ument?c=us&docid=129817&doclang=en&l=en&s=gen&cs= helps identify different models, but doesn't help with identifying which BIOS is needed (Though entering your Service Code on the support page will).
Basically, as far as I can tell, it breaks down into regular mid-tower vs slimline. The regular tower uses the 2MB 1.0.16/1.0.18 BIOS, the slimline uses the 1MB 1.0.2 BIOS. However, this summary breakdown may not be completely accurate.
My process:
I have an original Inspiron 530 that has the 1.0.18 BIOS already in place.
The flash program included in the first post does not work with the 2MB BIOS. So I downloaded the BIOS updater from DELL, and of course it is packaged as an EXE with little flexibility. I ran the flash utility, copied the data it extracted from the temp directory, removed their bios, and created a batch file with their launch command so the flasher would work. One note, I had to tell the flash utility that this BIOS was version 1.0.19 so it would run. Not to worry anybody reading this, after flashing, the actual BIOS revision will remain 1.0.18. I have attached the WinFlash files required below, just drop in the 1.0.18 Bin from the post on page 3, and run launch.bat (or if you need to change the bin name, just edit it inside the launch.bat file).
My results:
I was able to flash the BIOS after a bit of fiddling around. There are no actual overclocking options available in the BIOS, however, there are a few more tweaking options now. I am now able to toggle C1E, which is the primary feature I was looking for (Disabling C1E helps SSD performance). I have no idea why Dell won't give the C1E option.
AHCI does not appear to work. Under the stock BIOS, I was in "RAID" mode with a single SSD (which is the only way to get AHCI with stock BIOS). After switching to the modified BIOS, I tried AHCI, but it would quickly crash and reboot during windows startup. Back to RAID, and everything is fine.
One oddity, when I disable full screen logo, I get an error "No timer tick interrupt!" which requires F1/F2 to continue, which did not occur under stock BIOS. If I leave full screen logo enabled, I get no warning or request for F1/F2. This was not an issue under the stock BIOS. All internet searches state this is usually a bad MB or CPU, however, I don't think that is the case here, everything is still stable.
Attached below is a CPU-Z dump for information purposes and the required WinFlash files needed for the 1.0.18 BIOS (see description above).