P180HM LED Color Research

I was adding a second hard drive and decided to have a look around at the motherboard. Something has been bugging me for awhile, which is how they do the custom LED colors. Do they have different LED modules they plug in or what?

Well I found a few things. First, the buttons and tribal logo have all the LEDs necessary to do any color. For the back logo and the trackpad there is a connector/cable just for the LED that has several leads. And the hotkeybar is more complicated but while fiddling with it i was able to make some of them turn red, etc.. so... yeah.

I didn't see anything at all on the motherboard to control this. It's either hidden very well, or software controlled. I'm going to guess the latter.

That's as far as I've gotten. Every time this is brought up anywhere, nobody seems to know. Some distributors of this machine don't even offer the color setting. It's like a big secret, and of course this is making me even more curious!

So I'm starting a thread in hopes that someone else has already figured this out. I'm a programmer so I do have many tools at my disposal to figure this out if necessary but hopefully someone can clear the issue up and I won't have to re-invent the wheel!

 

haha I say go for it. I'm curious as well.

 

It'd be pretty awesome if someone figured out how to do this. More customization options are always better.

 

Seems like Malibal already knows how to change Tribal Logo color since they offer different color editions, but I guess they are not going to give away that secret.

 

Update. I asked Malibal for a copy of my BIOS and EC and they said it wasn't a good idea to flash it unless I was having an issue. I persisted, and so far have not gotten a reply. That was a little over 2 weeks ago. I really don't know how to take their silence, maybe it's simply overlooked, maybe they are guarding this "secret", but I've always been in favor of being able to use the hardware I own to its fullest extent, no matter how silly my end goals are... And anyway, this is an enthusiast's machine and tinkering should be expected.

Meanwhile I have been learning a lot about how the BIOS is set up and how people modify it, and the different components. I've done a lot of comparisons between the Clevo bios's modules and my own, but nothing has really stood out just yet.

What would be helpful, is if somebody here with a Malibal P180HMx with any coloration (except for green) were able to save their current BIOS to a file (a safe operation) and send me a copy. That way, I would at least be comparing apples to apples, and hopefully I could more aggressively search for this needle in a haystack.

Please PM if you're interested and can help. Just to document what I"m using so far, AFUWINGUI (in the aptios folder) is the utility I'm using to read my bios, and you can find it here:
AMI | American Megatrends Inc. : Download Agreement

That will get a .rom file that is what I'm working with so far.

I'll update when I have more info!

 

While I can't help at this moment, I am hoping to pick up one of these from Malibal (Blue) in a few weeks. If no one has answered the question at that point, I'll be glad to help.

 

So, maybe I misunderstood you, but if you found multiple leads and were able to change the LED colors using them, what makes you think it's software controlled?

 

Oh, btw, I have a P180HM with the stock red color on the way right now. I'll let you know when it gets here.

 

Hi there lenon,

That's a good point. However, if the color were hard wired, I think there would just be 2 leads. For the track pad, and the tribal logo, there are dedicated 8 or so lead cables (labelled AND color-coded, even), implying the logic to send power to which LED lies in the motherboard. The "shortcut buttons" panel is more complicated, it has some logic in it that I think controls the color based on some setup from the BIOS.

Also, I was able to change the LED color of the shortcut buttons by a not-recommended technique I call, "I touched the circuit board in the wrong spot and the colors changed". I didn't actually cut any wires, although in theory, I could do that, the system would think it was doing green, but it would be tricked into displaying something else -- at least for the trackpad and logo.

In addition, my EC reads as "EU1-Green" or something, which also suggests the color selection is a software setting.

If you do find time, that would be great!

 

I can do that for you. I'm a programmer as well, so if you want to communicate to me what you have so far, maybe we can figure this out.

 

Perhaps it's a combination of the two. Software controlled for the hotkeys and hardwired for the trackpad and tribal logo.

 

Sorry, I keep posting because I keep thinking of things. Since Malibal charges $25 to change the colors, I image it includes something "non-trivial". Just picking the proper lead to connect would be trivial, but flashing the BIOS could be considered non-trivial given the risk involved. I mean, any sort of power fluctuation during that process could brick the notebook.

 

Yeah, if I ran a company I'd charge $25 for a custom BIOS/EC flash. Maybe more. The risk for them would be low though, heck they could plug it into a UPS and it's a laptop anyway so there's built in battery back-up. But the time, and hassle of maintaining 8 or so EC versions is a cost too, plus any up front costs of acquiring them.

I'd be really be surprised if there's any hardwiring going on. Having the motherboard control one but not the others would be strange. The wires themselves are just dumb, straight through cables, there really didn't seem to be any customization to them.

 

So are you saying that all these leads are connected? I think that's the part I've been missing so far. I thought you were implying that only one of leads could be connected at a time.

 

This, would seem to imply that all the leads are connected, and it's a software issue.

 

hey guys! just got my new xotic p180hm, any news on led color change?

 

I've been sidetracked setting up MacOS Lion but some of those issues are similar (DSDT table and ACPI spec for example). I haven't given up just yet, though I don't get that since this model isn't sold any more why Malibal won't just give the info out...