L502X modded bioses download (GPU voltages and more!)

@ capitankasar

Can you check if this is an update to our system?

https://mega.co.nz/#!IcU3BYYD!Gn9YHBrjOEiUa8h7msv7KjbxQcT809evYZMWmKzXFdI

Source : Intel Management Engine: Drivers, Firmware and Tools

Is there any documentation?

Thanks

 

@windowsappme

it is a 1.5mb ME firmware, however, it is a ME 8.x , as for the moment, I was just able to boot ME 7.X firmwares on the machine.

others flashing tests resulted in corrupted ME regions or bricks.

there are some limitations for this system, one of them can be the flash size.

it have a 4 MB flash chip

I ordered two 16 MB chips from ebay, as soon they arrive, I will try getting them working on the machine.

once I will be able to get they booting with the current dumps, I will try flashing bigger ME images, in this case hybrid 7 and 8 ME firmwares.

if I have success with this, with a little bios modification, I may be able to run ivy bridge CPUs on this machine.

the bad news is that this mod wouldnt be compatible for you guys unless you also replace the flash chip itself.

I also saw this stuff

it seems there are people wich already tried similar stuff

Special: Intel Management Engine » Possible to update ME7 to ME8 on HM67?

 

Hey capitankasar,

I've downloaded modded bios file for the gt540m and extracted it. Ive ran the file stated and typed Y and enter then nothing happened after that?

What do I have to do?

 

@yl91

are you sure you extracted all the files from the rar file?

 

@capitankasar

Coming back to my problem, I decided to buy the adapter for the bios programmer and a handful of spare 25Q32BVSIG's (instead of the ZIFF adapter... don't want to cut into the motherboard).

They will arrive in about a week... I'll let you know if I'm successful.

 

let me know when they arrive

you can also use those adapters



on mi side, the bigger 16 MB chips arrived today



compared with the stock 4MB chip, they offer 4 times the old flash size, so we may be able to get more stuff working, anyway, all future softmods working on this will not be compatible with the non modded L502X machines due the lack of extra flash storage.

 

Hello capitankasar,
I apologize if this question has been asked, but this thread has become too huge to follow thoroughly. I installed your undervolted A12 BIOS because my gt540m crashed almost constantly while playing games (driver not responding error). This was in October 2013 and it worked like a charm! Now the driver keeps crashing again (quite often), without me making any changes to the BIOS. Is there an alternative solution to my problem?
For the record, I tried all of the supposed "solutions" I could find on the internet such as: increase windows tdr response window, razer game booster, closing all applications while playing, leaving the battery in etc for no avail...

Many thanks!

 

@Perkz

did you updated GPU drivers before it started crashing again?

it could be the issue, high temperatures and dirty heatsinks/fan fill of dust could also be the issue.

if nothing of this works, you will have to underclock your GPU, sometimes it is the only fix, as the GPU suffers some kind of "degradation" over the time.

I also had to reduce the overclock from my gt525m after some months/years

also, give a try to the latest modded bios, if you pick similar GPU and voltage settings you will keep your temps and GPU voltages and you also will enjoy the latest unlocked options and updates.

 

Thank you for that quick response!
Yes, I update my GPU drivers whenever the new stable version comes out. I've taken my laptop apart and cleaned it thoroughly a few months ago, and I'm even using a cooling pad (not a crappy cheap one), so I do not think that temperature is the problem...
I would resort to underclocking as the last measure, as the card is weak as it is already :/
I will try the latest modded bios then, thank you again for the support!

 

Wish I had known I could use a bigger capacity eeprom... Would have ordered a few bigger ones too. Oh well ;-)


Sent from my Nexus 4 using Tapatalk

 

they are pretty cheap, like 5 dollar each one.


I got those

New WINBOND IC Chip Flash 128M Bit 25Q128FVSG W25Q128FVSG SOP8 Package | eBay



the difficult part is program them and put them on the machine

 

I want to be able to configure and use the 3 extra keys (top right) above the main keyboard.

Is there an alternative software that works. Otherwise I have to reinstall windows 8.1 in non uefi mode.

 

testing -
Custom voltage moded A12 bios mod for gt540m with advanced menus for L502X DOWNLOAD from mediafire /// MIRROR by ximinez
MD5 checksum: A0DAB7E7FB91BA9E2CD64C3E76D048F3
mod version: version 6
BIOS version used: A12
this bios mod has been tested by Not tested yet
2D PROFILE: 0.83v
3D PROFILE: 0.85v
notes: Voltage modded A12 BIOS for gt540m with a nice set of extra options,plus native speedstep and updated CPU microcode,intel vbios update to v2137, sleep FIX for OSX,computrace unlock ,serial tag changer and RAID, handle the new options carefully!Recomended for GT540M users!

- SO FAR SO GOOD... ))

 

Read this: http://forum.notebookreview.com/del...wnload-gpu-voltages-more-213.html#post9307506 (linked in first post), third point is for you.

 

They have arrived, the sop8->dip8 adapter seems to work. I'm now reading the rom off the chip with the 'bad bios'... for good measure. It's really slow... I mean, REALLY slow... Might be because I'm doing it through a virtualized Windows XP (VirtualBox)...

I had a bit of trouble getting the dip8 smd actually into the "receptacle" of the adapter. Had to use a bit of force eventually. Any tips on getting the chip in that adapter easily?

Next step is flashing the (hexedited) rom you linked to onto this chip, then reading back that rom from the chip to verify it wrote it properly, then put my XPS back together... Nice project for tomorrow ;-)

Image: http://postimg.org/image/416pqolrh/

 

how much time it takes per read?

I remember I also made flash tests from a virtual machine, and it wasnt really fast ...
my flasher is homemade, it is probably different from yours so I'm not sure about the flashing sofotware.

however, in my case, the fastest way I got to read and flash stuff, were to move the flasher and a usb stick with bootable DOS environment and DOS utils of the flashing software to a desktop machine, so I booted from DOS and read the files from the usb stick to be flashed, the backups also were stored on the usb stick, just a few free MB needed.

then you can move the usb stick easly to your main computer so you can edit them.

about geting the chips on the sockets, I had a little troubles, because some of the legs didnt were having good contacts, so I had to push the chip legs a little to the bottom part, so all of them make good contact while I insert the chip into the sockets.

your flashing software looks really easy to use due the interface, mine only have command line interface.

 

Turns out the VirtualBox thing read only the first few hundred bytes correctly, after that it's all FF FF FF FF ... So I'm now gonna try with a XP Boot CD... I'll check back later

Edit: Boot CD gave me BSOD... trying VMware virtual machine now... Otherwise I'll have to find an old pc with XP somewhere... Probably my parents' home lol

 

Try changing SATA mode to ATA from AHCI. It sometimes fixes BSODs on my PC related to XP..

 

Managed to get it working via VMware... Read old one, wrote new one and verified it. Soldered it onto motherboard again.

Now I'm gonna put the XPS back together, shouldn't take long. I'll report back if it boots again ;-) (or explodes)

Once it has booted, I'm gonna need some hints on how to flash from windows (I unlocked the descriptor via hex edit like you suggested)

 

lets hope it works

edit: oh, it worked, well, about how to flash from windows, you can download the overclocking patch from the first post.

it enable Overclock, and it also includes fptw wich is the one wich flash from windows.

 

well, the flashing of the EEPROM worked. still reassembling the XPS

edit: pretty confident about my soldering... in hindsight, maybe I should have tested it before reassembling... lol

 

So, I assembled it and turned it on... The fan starts firing up and the hard drive (I think) spins up, but I get no lights on the palm rest assembly (no power up light cycle thing etc) and no display... Do these symptoms sound familiar in any way?

 

I got those sysmptoms when the flash chip info were corrupt or not properly connected (some of the legs didnt were properly connected by using the socket)

ensure the flash chip is properly attached and the rest of the system parts are OK too.

if it still give problems verify the chip image again.

 

Guess my soldering wasn't proper anyway! Argh... Good to know you had those symptoms too, anyway... I'll have another go at it later today

 

that could be the reason, oh, also ensure the chip orentation is the correct one, connecting the chip with a wrong orientation will not work and may damage your chip and or motherboard.

also applying too much heat while soldering can also damage your chip, it happened to me one time with the first chip, flad I made backups and was able to order extra chips from the net.

 

can someone help me please
the download link one the OP is not working
well i was downloading the Custom voltage modded A12 bios mod for GT540m
tried all the 3 versions
getting the error 'webpage is not available'

 

it works for me:
try those links if you still having issues.

L502X_A12_540m_83_85_Unlocked_Menus_v6

or this one

http://l502x.lag.re/L502X_A12_540m_83_85_Unlocked_Menus_v6.rar

 

Just disassembled it real quick, fixed the soldering, tested it without reassembling...

Got into the bios, with some errors about CMOS real time clock stuff and the battery (I think those errors are on account of having had the laptop disassembled for a week or so). So I think it's pretty much fixed now.

Gonna assemble it properly now... Hope everything is ok after that...

edit: It seems that bios dump actually has a non-uefi bios on it... Annoying as I can only boot using efi with my previous hard drive setup (use refind bootloader)!

edit2: on second boot all the errors went away (CMOS/battery)... So I'm pretty sure everything is OK now... Now to update the bios from dos mode or something... (is that possible?)

edit3: I'm about to make a FREEDOS boot disk and use this file to update to A12 uefi bios:

L502XA12.exe

It's the official DELL BIOS... Will this overwrite the security descriptor to lock it? Or is that now forever unlocked?

 

nice job

about updating the BIOS, try the BIOS recovery (by using the end key and cdrom method.)

 

ah! right. forgot about the end key thing. I'll try that now via usb flashdrive! Cheers. I'll let you know in 5 minutes if it worked.

I should replace the BIOS1.WPH from the .iso with whatever bios I want right?

And what about the security descriptor? Will that remain unlocked with this method?

 

right, you can put the BIOS1.WPH file from your choice, for example, a custom bios from my modded ones, so the proccess would be directly instead the need of several flashes.


the security descriptor will remain like that unless you flash a total backup of the full bios chip size with a locked descriptor part, or a locked descriptor itself via FPTW.

so, if you already unlocked it by the hex edits I pointed, you dont have to worry about bios updates, your descriptor will remain unlocked unless you lock it again manually.

 

Turns out the bios.cap is a A07 bios, which is also NON-UEFI. Guess I'll need a freedos bootdisk (I can't get in any operating system on my hard drives without efi working already).

Thanks for the info about the security descriptor.

 

the recovery cdrom already includes a tiny bootable windows wich allow to flash the bios from there. so all you need is to replace the wph file and proceed the recovery method with your modified ISO file.

then you will be able to boot your windows normally with the flashed bios

no need for freedos bootdisk I think ^^

 

Haha, well, that would be true if I had a cdrom (have hdd caddy), haven't found a way to boot the live windows from usb.

But I was making this problem harder than it was, I'm just gonna create a bootable usb windows 7 disk. NP

 

Typing this on the XPS 15 now. Still trying to figure out the bootloader, but I managed to get A12 UEFI bios on it (with your mods).

Thanks a lot for the help ;-)

Getting this when I try to flash the overclocking patch

Code:

C:\temp\Enable Overclock>L502X_ME_PATCH.bat
############################################
###### L502X ME PATCH BY CAPITANKASAR ######
############################################


Intel (R) Flash Programming Tool. Version:  8.1.10.1286
Copyright (c) 2007 - 2012, Intel Corporation. All rights reserved.

Platform: Intel(R) HM67 Express Chipset
Reading HSFSTS register... Flash Descriptor: Valid

    --- Flash Devices Found ---
    W25Q32BV    ID:0xEF4016    Size: 4096KB (32768Kb)


Warning: The file does not contain enough data to completely fill
         the target write area! Continuing will truncate the Write
         Length to the File Length!
            File: "l502x_me_overclock_by_capitankasar.bin"
            File Length: 839680
            Write Length: 1568768

Do you want to continue? Y/<N> or q to quit :

I choose Yes and rebooted. Now it says ME version number 0.0.0.0 in the BIOS ME section... Is this normal?

edit: Made use of the unlocked security descriptor to roll back to that badcaps forum dump and do the upgrade procedure again. Now on the "stock ME" again for now.

 

congrats

yeah, getting 0.0.0.0 in bios me section isnt good, I got it while trying to do ME stuff like upgreade to version 8.0 and stuff like that.

well, you can upgreade normally doing that , flash the whole dump again (mod it to be descriptor unlocked, else , if you flash a full dump without unlock your descriptor, you will lose FPTw capabilities)

you can upgreade to the latest ME from this topic, and flash the overclocking patch, it works like a charm, too bad it need hardware mods, however you are one of the little group who are able to do it

 

In fact, I just got it working ;-D the trick was doing a shutdown after the patch operation, not just reboot (critical difference, probably in recycling the bios and populating variables of some kind...)

Maybe you should alter the instructions slightly to include that (shutdown instead of reboot).

View image: bclk

I'll stress-test later...

 

congrats!

and welcome to the L502X BCLK overclocking club hehe.

that plus the fast strings settings got my i3 to get the scores of the next proccesor series.

I have to test now it again with my new i5.

this can be even being maxed more if I get the XTU modules working on the bios.

the bad thing is that I didnt had success yet integrating new modules at the bios, just replacing existing ones with new ones or modded versions

well , about the reboot, it worked fine for me, it could be some kind of flashing issue you had at the first time.

btw, there is a bigger issue at the first post.

I noticed imageshack images ..... most of them failed, just the last new Images I added are working, the bad thing is that I dont have backups of most of them, so the first post looks really dump now :/

not sure how I will fix this, however, whatever, I will not upload anything to anymore to imageshack in the future.

 

ok, images are back, I had to pay some dollars to them in order to have them back , but well.

I will probably move them to another server soon, even I picked the cheapest month suscription, I dont want to pay at all, I just paid to recover them.

 

Bah they charged you for getting your images back... Maffia business... How much $ did they ask? I can Paypal you a small amount if needed, since you were so helpful.

Sent from my Nexus 4 using Tapatalk

 

yeah, they maffia, I dont like imageshack since a while, slow and it isnt free anymore, I will move the images to another host.

to get the images back, I had to get at least the minimal montly suscription 2$ per month... but well, like I said, I will move to another server soon,

I started using imgur.com for some time ago, it seems ok, so I think I will move stuff there.

oh, and dont worry about that

I apreciate it anyway ^^

 

Hmm... Now I used my laptop a bit, and I noticed my speakers don't produce any sound... Guess the speaker connector is disconnected.. Have to open it again :-D

Sent from my Nexus 4 using Tapatalk

 

Hi capitankasar,
I have recently flashed the current version of your mod bios. Overall it is working fine so far. The only feature I cannot get to work is the RAID mode. When I switch from AHCI to RAID and then reboot the notebook the OROM UI will not be displayed. And so the notebook will not recognize the HDD and the optical disc drive. The corresponding BIOS option for showing the OROM UI is enabled by default. Is there anything else I have to enable?

Second question: What is the reason to stay at VBIOS 2137? I think build 2170 should be the latest available version for Sandy- / Ivy-Bridge.

 

hey MorLipf


well, as for the moment, sadly RAID mode requires extra configuration and tweaks.

since I dont use raid, I was unable to test it, but there are people who already had success testing it, I suggest to give a read to this

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

http://www.bios-mods.com/forum/Thread-UEFI-Dell-XPS-15z-L511z-modded-BIOS-and-HOWTO?page=158

it seems some bcfg comands are involved in the proccess, you will need a usb stick with some files and enable uefi mode to enter the

as for the Intel VBIOS the current one looks fine, and I had some issues while updating to other version, also I'm not doing many updates right now.

but well, for the next update, I will try to update the vbios to the 2170

do you have a link to a 2170 vbios ?

 

Thanks for your quick response.
So I will stay at AHCI mode because of the troubles UEFI mode causes.

On the Win-Raid-Forum there is a package linked which contains VBIOS 2170 for desktop and mobile computers. I have already modified the connector table of VBIOS 2170 for my ASUS P8Z68-V mainboard and flashed it. It is working fine so far on this desktop board.

 

I just updated from mod version 5 to 6 and everything seems to be working fine! played some rounds cs:go and so on. no problems so far. i used the version with 2D PROFILE: 0.83v and 3D PROFILE: 0.85v for the gt540m. thanks for your great work. maybe you find the time to describe the extra options of the bios a little bit, so we can understand for what all those menus are :-D

greetz nuss

 

@Nuss

thanks

well, I will make that when I have some time, but make sure you enable the fast strings settings, it is good to have

 

i activated it. i don´t understand what it is good for, but when you say it what does the "HDD unlock" function?

years ago i tried to install MAC OS X on my laptop, as it had similiar hardware to the macbook pro from that time. i couldn´t work it out, because the bios wasn´t able to boot from a HDD with GPT partition table. is your bios able to do that? or better asked, has anybody installed the latest OS X on the l502x successfully?

greetz nuss

 

@ Nuss
You can boot from a GPT partition when you enable the UEFI mode in BIOS. But that causes crashes when you try to use the function keys of the keyboard. Take a look at the Chameleon bootloader. It can emulate an UEFI environment and boot for example OS X even in MBR mode.

@capitankasar
I have now successfully integrated VBIOS 2170 into your Mod-BIOS with a ported connector table. It seems to work fine but I have not tested the external display ports yet. Is there anything else I have to test to proof that the VBIOS is fully working?

 

@MorLipf

I belive you

I also downloaded the 2170 file you told me, and patched the connector table.

it is pending to be added to the next relase, its just that I will wait until I get some other new changes to relase a new one ^^

oh, and thank you a lot for testing and the info ^^

mmm, about something new to test, mmm, since you are already running the new VBIOS, you may be able to test stability or performance tests, in order to see if there is something interesting from the current VBIOS to the new one.