Please, @Prema, grant me access to your blog!

I need the newest version of Prema mod by the brilliant @Prema himself. The problem is that his blog (here: https://biosmods.wordpress.com/) is for some reason private. Prema, I'm now speaking directly to you: please let me in man, I desperately need your help.

If anyone else has please share it with me. I'd also like to know why the blog is private. I'm just curious.

 

Hey, hello man, I saw your videos regarding Prema mod. They're really great, especially the Installation one. Because this is your area of expertise, I'd like to know if the BIOS flash will work on a HP BIOS ( 68SAD Ver. F.62 BIOS more precisely). And no, the statement you quoted wasn't stupid. I was wondering for the reason to shut down public access to the blog. Were people assholes? Did scammers distribute their malware on @Prema 's blog and he had to make it private? THIS is the kind of curiosity I was pointing towards.

Your answers and insights are much appreciated! Thank you in advance!

P.S.: If you have the newest Prema mod please share it with me. I'll be very grateful.

 

Not an issue, he probably has his reasons but I cannot speak for him nor distribute any of his work. not that I have any after I sold my Clevo laptop

PS: The BIOS flash can only be flashed on the the laptop model it was meant for. Not even cross flashing between different Clevo machines, so forget about HP unless he makes a custom mod for it.

 

OK, thanks for the additional information, man. I am confused though. In this thread, a user by the name of @artpra said that his HP EliteBook 8770w has Prema vBIOS 1.1.1 installed. Since there is no Prema mod for HP, I really don't know what's going on anymore. How did he do this?! Please answer, I need to get my GTX 980M working on my HP EliteBook 8760w BADLY.

P.S.: If you know Prema, let him know about my problem. And I'd like to ask for another favour: if you get in contact with him, please ask him to make a HP Prema mod. PLEASE. I know that I sound like I'm having an aneurysm, but I'm really invested into doing my upgrade and getting a better BIOS. I swear to God, the HP EliteBook BIOS is s h i t. No doubt about it. Thank you in advance!

 

Prema has his hands full with modding for Clevo and MSI 16L notebooks. The odds of him doing anything for HP are somewhere between none and not going to happen.

 

Do you know how to get into his private blog though? I'd really like t contact this great man and ask him for some serious advice.

 

Well like you said, that's a Prema vBIOS mod for the 980M MXM card, not an sBIOS (system BIOS) mod for the laptop itself.

 

Can you PLEASE tell me how to install this mod?! I have no idea, I BEG you please!

 

Now you're starting to sound like me....

 

You don't need it for a functional GPU. It just increases performance and reduces throttling. AFAIK you flash it the same way you do other mods, from a DOS-bootable USB at startup.

 

Yeah, I'm pretty desperate, but can you blame me? Do you even know what a boost would a GTX 980M. And besides, my current GPU is Quadro 3000M... So yeah HELP ME!!! HEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEELP!

 

Oh, thank you so much for that info, I A M R E L I E V E D . Uf, knowing that I almost trashed my BIOS with a Clevo Prema mod... Damn, you guys are the best, you saved my machine! THank you!

 

That is correct. @Carrot Top is right, it's only to enhance performance by correcting behavioral stupidity compared to using NVIDIA's inferior defaults and it improves overclocking capacity.

To install a vBIOS on an NVIDIA GPU you use NVFLASH software to flash it. Once you have it installed and working in the HP help with using NVFLASH won't be difficult to find in this community.

 

Oh, welcome back! Thank you for the tip! Now I'll know which software to use. One more question: does this procedure have any potential to brick my device? I'm paranoid that's all

 

yes it does if not done correctly or if a wrong VBIOS was flashed. Please do this at your own risk

here is an example:




Copy the nvflash folder to the root of C:\ and place your VBIOS file in it as well


name it something easy like nvflash without any version number for ease of access:


Run Command Prompt As Admin by pressing the Window + X Button on your keyboard then choose Command Prompt (Admin)


type cd\ to go back to the root of C:\


type cd nvflash to enter the nvflash folder


copy/paste the below command and substitute the BIOS Flash name highlighted in blue with the name of YOUR BIOS File name


nvflash64 -i0 -6 161A.rom


accept the warning, your screen will flash as the GPU is temporary is disabled


then you will get a prompt to reboot, do that


If for any reason you notice your GPU is not active, simply go to device manager and re-enable it

 

Thank you SO much for a clear tutorial. You truly DO care about my device! Cheers, mate!

 

Save your original vBIOS first so you can go back to it if necessary. If you brick the GPU you can fix it by manually programming the firmware with an SPI flash programmer if the machine is unable to boot and use NVFLASH. Using a programmer is the safest way to do it. Saving and flashing firmware with a Skypro or TL866A removes most of the risk for an unfavorable outcome if you are charting unfamiliar waters or doing experiments with firmware and the outcome is uncertain. Risk of bricking or a flash gone wrong is always a little bit greater using software, but it is certainly more convenient using software. Having a programmer and learning how to use it one of the best things I have ever done for myself.

 

Do you mean my old Quadro vBIOS or my new GTX 980M vBIOS? Which one? Both?

 

Always good to have a backup copy of all firmware in case you need it someday. System BIOS and vBIOS. A chip dump using a hardware programmer is the best way. It makes an exact copy of everything on the chip that is ready to write back to the chip with the programmer when or if you ever need to.

 

What software should I use for backing up vBIOS. I recently installed GPU-Z. In its control panel, there is an option which says SAVE BIOS (subscription...). I supposed this is it? But what if the system doesn't recognise the GPU? Should I then firstly install the drivers and THEN back the whole thing up?

 

More like hardware.

Not the cheapest listing as of now, but it includes a lot of extra adapters -> http://www.ebay.com/itm/TL866A-USB-...063571?hash=item212b0b0653:g:5NAAAOSw8vdZdwEn

 

Hey, thanks for the clarification. Also, that avatar is um... interesting if you know what I mean (*wink wink nudge nudge*).

 

You can use NVFLASH or GPU-Z to make a backup copy of the vBIOS that will work with NVFLASH. The file generated using that method won't work for hardware flashing. If you flash the file dumped with NVFLASH or GPU-Z using the hardware programmer the GPU won't be bootable in most cases. That's why you need to save a copy with the hardware programmer if you plan to use a hardware programmer.

Drivers are totally unrelated. If the machine never came from the factory with the GPU installed as an option, you have to mod the INF to include the missing hardware ID information. That part is very simple. You use Notepad and add the missing code, or change one of the hardware IDs of code already found in the INF file to match your hardware ID. It takes less than a minute to update the hardware ID for the driver INF mod using Windows Notepad.

 

That's a good setup right there.

 

OK, man, all clear. Now I sure that I won't brick my device. Besides, do you even NEED the vBIOS mod in order for GTX 980M to work. Or will it work just with the drivers?

 

You should not need the vBIOS mod for the GTX 980M to work. It will more likely work with whatever vBIOS is already on it. There is always a remote chance that you might need to tweak something in the firmware to fix a black screen issue or loss of brightness controls, or something like that, but very unlikely IMHO. The Prema vBIOS mod you are talking about wasn't even made with the idea of it being usable for your HP, but I suspect it will still work just as well as it would for the intended products that were not made by HP. That part is more often than not unimportant.

 

Uf, and I was on my merry way to brick my machine with a Prema BIOS. You basically saved my ass, how can I repay you?

 

Given that

1. Updated bios from manufacturer
2. Newest driver
3. Properly cooled core
4. Properly cooled VRM and VRAM (also take notice if you have VRAM chips on the back)


The 980M would work perfectly on stock. But if you want to maximum overclock / tweak voltage, you need a modified vbios.

With a modified vbios you can even run the card under the specified default voltage and still get a little overclock out of it while running cooler.



Flashing a modded vbios (980M) if done properly shouldn't have any harm. But some small case of notebook doesn't really like a modified bios, may result in loss of screen brightness control. In this case you can flash back to your default vbios (always backup before flash) or maybe you can ask Klem in techinferno to fix it for you.

 

It may not have bricked anything. You never know this stuff until you try it and see what happens. If you're prepared with the right tools, bricking an sBIOS or vBIOS is generally little more than an inconvenience and a nuisance to have to stop and deal with it. Never particularly "fun" but not something to be overly scared of if you're ready to deal with it.

Your appreciation is more than adequate payment. That's more valuable than anything else.

 

Hm, now that I think about it, I DO have a barely functional 10 years old Dell laptop, so I'll experiment a bit > he he he. I'll see how it goes, learning from destruction is always fun, he he he.

 

OK, you sure calmed me down A LOT. I always get so angry when HP says: "No, if you put <insert superior hardware here> you will break your device, it isn't COMPATIBLE with our model." Greedy bastards trying to narrow my field of use and knowledge. But once again, thank you (and btw, as I said, nice avatar )!

 

I sort of understand both sides of the coin.
There are people who are willing to act honorably and responsibly and act with dignity. Those people exist. Trustworthy people exist. More companies might be willing to let customers test unreleased software or confidential tools if people showed full responsibility and also admitted they accept voiding their warranty if something goes wrong. But too many people have ruined it for others. People have leaked firmwares, softwares, tools, things that were not designed to be released--it's happened in the past in various fields. And it ruins it for others.

How do you think I feel? I pleased and begged MSI to allow me to test the unlocked EC firmware for the GT73VR 7Rx series, due to the new existence of the Pascal TDP mod. I admitted responsiblity, i showed the most amount of respect and appreciation and support for them in the email message, willing to sign a NDA and accept voiding my warranty. Yet they said "we will not release it." Yes it feels bad when you can't even prove your trust or honor to someone, but how do THEY know the person asking is honorable? What proof do they have? What credentials do I have to show that I wouldn't throw an unlocked EC on some drive in some fit of rage ?

Sometimes yes, companies do act unreasonable, and I can also see @Mr. Fox 's view points about how companies just want to use people like sheep and money tools for the best profits they can get. But everyone can't be judged the same. Some companies hire some very nice honest and hard working people who really care about their craft and want others to appreciate their work. But all too often, the ones that control them don't give a damn at all (Hi Mr. Azor .....).

 

Hm , that's a very interesting point of view, @Falkentyne ! Yes, I kinda feel the same. But there are just some DESIGN FLAWS in corporate products I cannot accept. While I CAN understand why companies don't want to release all of their hardware and software, I CAN NOT understand the design that willingfully restrict customers from upgrading to better specs, AKA not being able to buy third party hardware. In my eyes, this is wicked. It is in no way customer-friendly. Just look at NVIDIA for example. In last 3 years, this company signed contracts with multiple Game studios like Ubisoft, Projekt Red etc. to code their games SPECIALLY for NVIDIA Pascal architecture. This was a clever move that handicapped AMD's high end GPUs and made their performance visibly worse. Is this etical? No. But can you blame them for finding out a perfect formula for $$$ MONEY $$$ ??? Yes. To this end, I stick to @Mr. Fox , I think that all computers should be kind of an "open source" - don't give user a chance to hurt others or carelessly void their warranty - but DO give them a chance to upgrade with hardware from 3rd party companies.

If you think about it, if companies made their product more compatible in the first place, it would be WAY HARDER to void your warranty in pursuit of upgrade. But who am I kidding, this is a corporate game: dog eat dog. I doubt that we will ever come to a "tech symbiosis", it's too big of a profit-cutter. In the meantime, I am glad that I have a machine that IS upgradable. I LOVE my good old HP 8760w. This baby will soon be sporting serious specs (if save some money in the future, I might even upgrade my CPU, he he he). Thank you for your insightful post. Cheers!

 

The best understanding to have where the notebook OEM/ODM is concerned is very simple and straightforward: TRUST NO ONE! They ARE NOT our friends and they DO NOT give a rat's butt about us. We are a revenue stream for them. PERIOD. They offer products on a take-it-or-leave it basis. Functionality and performance and durability are an afterthought for them and to focus on those things merely impedes their accumulation of wealth.

There are several very trustworthy boutique vendors that sell notebooks in an official capacity that are talented, caring and advocates for their customers. They bend over backwards and go the extra mile and right many wrongs in the process. We love them and they are our friends. HIDevolution is an excellent example or a boutique that is superior and they earn the admiration of their customers by being extraordinary. But, the OEMs/ODMs have them by the short hairs as well. There are limits to their ability to do the right thing for customers versus losing their connections and getting black-balled as a reseller.

When Alienware started circling the drain and pretending to be interested in the things we do so they could do things to block and interfere with stuff we do is when I decided we're in this for ourselves. Identify your enemies, then avoid them and their products. Discourage others from doing business with them. You identify a platform that has a solid hardware base you can work with to get where you want to go, pull your pants up, roll up your sleeves, and dive in. Brand loyalty is a thing of the past and only fools go there now. It's not every man for himself, but it is definitely a case where the enthusiast group is on their own and fending for ourselves. We cannot expect great things from companies that are only concerned with themselves and don't bat an eye about screwing their customers if it will make them a few extra bucks in the process. Most of the biggest widely recognized brand names fall into the enemy category now.

 

Have you ever used HP EliteBook BIOS? I swear to God, this is the S H I T T I E S T piece of garbage I've ever seen. I was appalled when I saw three simple tabs: System Information, System Security and Boot Options. For ****'s sake, my ancient Dell has more options than the abomination I have to suffer in my otherwise good device. I tell you, pure castration, nothing else. Hands down the most restricting BIOS of all I've seen so far. That's why I'm so desperate for a HP Prema BIOS. @Prema, our saviour, get on this stuff, please.

 

That's pretty much status quo for notebooks now. Firmware is the thing the manufacturers seem to delight in botching more than anything else. It's easy for them to cut the testicles off of both good and crappy hardware using cancerous firmware.

 

Yeah, I can see through their wickedness: "Let's make everything easily upgradable, BUT the essential thing, you know, the ~600 lines of read-only code that communicates with the whole system, yeah, let's make that ****ty beyond comprehension. This way, we can hold our customers in the mentality of fanboys and sheep!"

 

Don't have your surprised look on your face when the day comes that notebooks have expiration dates and will auto-brick when their time runs out based on the discretion of the OEM/ODM in deciding how long they want to "authorize" us to use "their hardware" platforms. Never mind that we buy it, they still view it as being "their" stuff and they assume the right to decide what we can do with it. With clowns like Micro$loth pioneering the concept of selling filth as a service, there will be no end to their creative madness.

 

Hey, a side note, as you mentioned Micro$loth. Recently, I installed an update on my 8760w. Before that, the boot proceeded normally, but now, after the nasty "update", the system takes about 3 minutes to fully boot, and if I press ANYTHING before that, I get a white screen and then for a second black, and then the process of 3 minute boot restarts. Truly filth, as you said. I wanted to ask you: (if you use Windows) did the same happen to you at any point in time? Also, for the last two years or so, I've been working on Kali GNU/Linux as well. I cannot even express the difference in performance, refresh rates, etc. that improved upon switching to Kali (I have two SSDs in my laptop, one for Windows, and one for Kali). Only then I realised that Windows is compete and utter trash, sadly, it STILL is the leading OS for gaming, as the dirty bastards got a hold of DirectX.

If they DO try to brick our devices, we'll strike back for sure. I'm counting on @Prema to save us with even more diversity in his Prema mod.

 

Is the Great One even reading this thread though?

 

I did not have that trouble, but I do not allow Micro$loth to update anything on my systems. Only I have the right to decide on what gets installed. I view that as being none of their business. As I result, I spare myself from most of the drama that others are putting up with. I mod the crap out of my Windows 10 ISO prior ot installation to block most of the nonsense, but it is still inferior to Windows 7. I dual boot both of my systems with Windows 7 and the other machines in our family of computers... XPS 15 (wife), XPS 15 (daughter) Acer notebook (son), Alienware M17xR2 (son), Dell Inspiron (son), home built desktop (son), HP Pavilion (son-in-law), Dell XPS desktop (grandson) are all running Windows 7 and will continue running Windows 7 indefinitely because they all despise Windows 10 even more than I do... which is saying a lot considering the depth of my hate for it. DX12 is still a worthless piece of crap. Their evil and proprietary control freak implementation of it as a Windows 10-only API and mostly for use with UWA game filth make it an undesirable API, so in my opinion DX11 and Vulkan and OpenGL are all we need to continue moving forward. I do not really see any reason for W10 to exist other than to facilitate extortion and control freak behavior by the Redmond Mafia. It serves no useful purpose from an end user perspective when you stop and think about it.

I actually love Linux and I would kick Micro$loth's filth to the curb in a heartbeat but for the fact that I am unable to do most of the things I enjoy doing with my computers in Linux. Linux is a superior OS with functional limitations that exist only because of Windows dominating the world. I doubt it will ever replace Windows because of the limitations and the fact that development is primarily a volunteer effort. The people that give their time to develop Linux don't seem to have much in common with guys like me, so they do not develop the stuff that matters to me. So, kind of between a rock and a hard spot. I have no interest in using virtual machines for anything, so running Windows under Linux isn't going to cut it for me. But, I plan to continue using Windows 7 until doing so becomes impossible. I do not need or care about having support from Micro$loth in terms of updates. As long as drivers are available for the hardware to work I will be using Windows 7. I could say until Windows 10 is good enough to replace Windows 7, but I think we are at the point know where it is obvious that will never be true. It seems to be beyond the mental capacity of Micro$loth's software engineers to ever make that happen.

Probably not. Keeping up with every post he gets tagged in would be a 24/7 job with no time off for anything important or fun, LOL.

 

That is because of warranty, support, and technician limitation.



When you sell a laptop as a first rate manufacturer, you only support the initial configuration, and adding critical upgrade parts just add headache just to the whole warranty/support department on top on instructing the technicians.

 

You know, now that you mention OpenGL, I remembered one of my ideas I conceived a couple of months ago. I am a fan of many games that are console-exclusive, but don't want to get screwed over by their pricing and limitations (consoles are the ENTERPRISE of limitation). Of course, famous emulators like Dolphin (Wii) and RPCS3 (PS3) all use a raw rendering process, as they can't make use of DX11 or DX12, so which process do they get a hold of? That's right, OpenGL or OpenCL. I was shocked when I saw just how many frames my poor old Quadro 3000M was delivering! This is of course because Qaudros have a specific architecture dedicated to OGL and OCL. Hm, I though for a second and got an idea: What if we started using Qaudros for gaming? Of course, this idea has a lot of flaws, one of them being game developers surrendering to Micro$loth's balckmailing and writing a game's code specially for DX11/12. But, if we ever see an increase in OGL/OCL, I'll have my utopic hypothesis in my mind.

Another side note. I fully support your dedication to the best and most undefiled OS on the market, but I am afraid that time will "defeat" your pursuit in some sense. There will come a point in time when Windows 7 will be so outdated that it will be virtually useless (as you pointed out yourself). Where to next? By your true observation, all OS's (except GNU/Linux; exclude the s h i t t y Ubuntu) are becoming more and more proprietary, moreover, Apple and Microsoft are beginning to stretch their monopoly across ALL OS's. I'm just curious, what will you do next? Linux? I'm sure you wouldn't even want to touch the new corporate filth with a stick. I don't want to lecture you, I'm just concerned about how you will continue to work in future.

I think that we need an OS that would compete with Windows, and I think that this is possible. Just look at Richard Stallman for example. He started his GNU project in 1984 and was about to finish it in 1993 but then a guy Linus Torvalds showed up and and added one last thing: a kernel. That's why all of us today know the operating system as Linux instead of GNU/Linux (poor Richard ). My point is that in spite of Torvalds contributing a great deal to the project, THIS is the essential mistake. Our next project in pursuit of cyber and hardware freedom is to start a project and finish it homogenously! This way, big companies won't stand a chance in conquering our emancipation. One last trick we have to figure out is how to make the OS and BIOS code universally compatible? This idea might seem like magic to you, but I DO think that it is possible. My friend at MIT (I help him often with the math stuff) recently sent me a draft of his research on pathological coding. The basic idea is to write all of the code for a certain OS in the most basic terms possible, or if you fancy, "in one layer". This way, companies are powerless, as they would have to jump to a non-binary system of computing to prevent us from modifying our machines. What do you think of this idea? Cheers.

 

When studying the procedure you cited, I ran into a problem. In spite of the tutorial being brilliantly clear, I can't figure out how I'm supposed to get the 161A.rom file, which is persumably the new NVIDIA vBIOS I am planning to flash. I've searched on the internet, but nothing shows up. Do I have to possess the physical hardware (in my case GTX 980M) and THEN extract the vBIOS with a tool like GPU-Z from it? Please help me I'm confused, although I think my guess is pretty solid.

 

You need to type the filename of the rom file that matches your system.

 

But how do I find the filename that matches my system? My only guess is to download it with GPU-Z once my GTX 980M is in the 8760w.

 

Its actually specific to your MXM GPU board, anyway to find it would be GPU-z.