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    Designing and Writing Custom BIOS

    Discussion in 'Hardware Components and Aftermarket Upgrades' started by taklantaran, May 11, 2011.

  1. taklantaran

    taklantaran Newbie

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    Does anyone have any experience in developing their own custom BIOS or editing existing BIOS to replace the OEM one? Could you redirect me to any other resource that I may find useful?
     
    taklantaran, May 11, 2011
    #1
  2. svl7

    svl7 T|I

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    Writing a BIOS from scratch? Not possible I'd say...

    Editing an existing BIOS yes, but it takes a lot of disassembling and programming skills, it's not easy at all.

    You might find some stuff here, though it's possible that some things are outdated... and here.

    It's nothing you can learn over night.
     
    svl7, May 11, 2011
    #2
  3. Aluminum

    Aluminum Notebook Consultant

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    coreboot

    Some recent designs claim to fully support it (amd's fusion for example) though it depends a lot on what peripherals are used.

    The idea of booting barebones to fullblown linux is tempting for some things.
     
    Aluminum, May 11, 2011
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  4. 1234s282

    1234s282 Newbie

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    1234s282, May 12, 2011
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  5. maximinimaus

    maximinimaus Notebook Evangelist

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    maximinimaus, May 12, 2011
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  6. ViciousXUSMC

    ViciousXUSMC Master Viking NBR Reviewer

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    I have done quite a bit of bios modding, and I have bricked a computer twice doing it lol. Its risky business.
     
    ViciousXUSMC, May 12, 2011
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  7. taklantaran

    taklantaran Newbie

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    Thanks a lot folks. At least I have an idea of what it is.
     
    taklantaran, May 12, 2011
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  8. newsposter

    newsposter Notebook Virtuoso

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    Anything is possible if you're willing to put the time and energy in to the learning.

    Phoenix, and maybe AMI, had a modular developer BIOS kit that *used* to be freely downloadable if you had some kind of industry credentials.
     
    newsposter, May 12, 2011
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  9. jclausius

    jclausius Notebook Virtuoso

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    I think Vicious is talking about modifying an existing BIOS, flashing the system, and the mod'ed BIOS was so messed up, it bricked the machine.
     
    jclausius, May 13, 2011
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  10. jclausius

    jclausius Notebook Virtuoso

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    If your mod'ed BIOS leaves the EEPROM in a bad, bad state or the video doesn't work after the flash or some other problem, unless you can do a blind flash, the only option is to get a replacement BIOS chip.

    I don't want to put words in his mouth, so I'll let Vicous expand on his story.
     
    jclausius, May 13, 2011
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  11. newsposter

    newsposter Notebook Virtuoso

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    Well, yah, you can brick just about any device with a bad flash or whatever.

    One of the points of a known-good developers kit is that it takes some of the risk out of the process......

    UEFI bios is a lot simpler. The firmware boot sequence is very generic and non-specific before it looks to other media/drives, etc for follow-on code.

    Since UEFI is pretty much the future the OP might want to go down that route. Learn to write the phase 2,3,4 boot code and leave the phase 1 (hardware boot) alone.
     
    newsposter, May 13, 2011
    #11