Hacked my motherboard bios with CBRom.exe - is it safe to flash?

[rockhard]

Ive just extracted my bios from a MSI 9105LR which has Fastrak100 Lite onboard raid, had a go at removing the Fastrak100 Lite code and then spliced the latest bios for the Fastrak100 addin raid card from Promises webby.
It all appears to have gone fine and the new bios's list of components shows the new code component for the full blowen Fastrak100.
Thing is i did this under a WinXP command prompt - is this OK?
Has anyone tried this with other mobo's and had success going from Lite to Full version Raid?

Im not in the mood right now to be guinea pig as i aint got the time to fix it if it goes wrong

Any feedback or advice be gratefully received.

Thanx,

rockhard =)

 

[sharkeeper]

CBrom is ok to use under command prompt in NT 5/5.1. FYI, MODBIN does NOT save your bios under NT! You must use msdog for that...

I'm not sure the Promise BIOS for the add in cards is the same. You can get locked out if the Promise bios is wrong as the BIOS will get stuck at verifying DMI when booting. You may want to invest in a BIOS saviour or (at least) have another system ready that you can hotflash in case it goes amiss!

I have an MSI 845Ultra sitting here with that same Promise Lite crap and thought about doing this. If you decide to go for it, let us know what happens!

Cheers!

 

[smp]

I have no idea!

but I say go for it!

 

[rockhard]

thanx for the advice sharkeeper
If only i could find some concrete info on which addin card uses the 20265R chip.
This is the only thing thats holding me back as im sure the bios will be fubored for booting if its the wrong chip



<< but I say go for it! >>



hehe, i think you waiting for the post saying my bios is fubored
thanx for the encouragement though.

 

[dkozloski]

No Guts! No Glory!

 

[rockhard]

Ive just done some g@@gling around and it would appear theres more to it than meets the eye
Firstly the actual bios plugin for the mobo's bios has to be edited in a Hex editor so that it does not freek out when it finds its associated device is not on the same Device ID as what it would be on the addin card.
Secondly the drivers for Windows have to be edited also with the aforementioned Device ID for them to work.
Oh well project bios hack will have to go on hold till i find a bios Hex editing guide somewhere on the net.
If any of you guys know of any such bios hacking guide resources, do let me know so i can resume my project.

Cheers,

rockhard =)

 

[cbuchach]

DEFINATELY get a BIOS Savior or something as a backup before flashing. They are only ~$20 and really work well. I wouldn't flash my BIOS without one!

 

[rockhard]

Update:

Ive managed to find a hacked bios that will allow it to accept the different device ID of the onboard Raid over its intended cards ID
Ive also got a set of drivers which are the latest and have also had the device ID change within them to allow them to work with the above hack

Ive popped the whole lot, bios, flasher and autoexec file for bootable floppy. Also included is the drivers that will be needed for this hacked bios.

Im not in a position to try this out till i get a chip extractor so if anyone else would like to try who is confident they can recover a damaged bios please feel free to try out and let us know how you get on.

You can download the files from *HERE*

Please NB - This bios is for the MSI 9105LR motherboard ONLY. I do not accept any responsiblity for anything that could go wrong with the above so is to be done at your own risk. Do not attempt unless you are confident with hot swapping bios or have bios saviour or similar.

rockhard =)