How to > HP BIOS MiniPCI Fix- nc6000/others

[boredwild]

I was just wondering if turning off the antennas would save battery power? Better to use an old card than to have to buy something different!

Cheers!

[Dink]

Semi

Have you tried modifying the BIOS on the NX6325 to run an Atheros card as I would love to change my Broadcom card but no one seems to have been sucessful modding one of these newer BIOSes yet, and they only support 1 card ?? If you can sucessfully mod one I am prepared to remove my BIOS chip fit a DIP socket and fit a spare BIOS chip to try the mod ,so I can easily return from a Death Flash As I dont think Crisis Recovery works on these

If you reckon you can I can supply the .BIN file etc for modding and supply relavent PID/VID +subsys Id's

Thanx Dink

[semi]

hey Dink,

its indifferent which minipci card you would like to add to your whitelist.
Use the ADDCC to mod your bios file. There is a turorial included.

I dont understand what exactly your problem is.

Please post your original bios file with HP-Link and your ID's.
And then show my step by step what you doing and where you hanging.

Cheers Semi

[Dink]

Hi Semi
Thanx for the quick reply,well the truth is I haven't tried to modify the BIOS myself, I tried looking at the ROM.BIN (68TT2) with my hex editor HV132 but I cannot find the exact match for the PCI VEN/DEV and SUBSYS codes in the hex I can find very similar entries but NOT identical ?? Maybe the free hex editor I am using ?

The main reason that I would have to go the long way round as such by fitting a PLCC socket and another chip BEFORE flashing is that its the other Halfs Laptop and she would cut off my balls if I screwed up her Lappy and as I rather like mine intact I would have to do it this way I have looked and the BIOS chip is under the keyboard and looks easy to change for a PLCC socket with a little patience.

I have searched for months for an answer to this online but no one has managed to flash one of these without getting a bricked lappy on reeboot or if they have managed a flash when the battery and AC removed for 30 mins refit and reboot , blank screen and dead ??
I have downloaded the ADDCC but to be brutally honest I am scared to try it with my very little knowledge about HEX

Here are the bits you asked for to see,hope you can make more sense of it than me

This is the card I would like to fit:

Gigabyte GN-WI01GT : PCI\VEN_168C&DEV_001C&SUBSYS_E9131458&REV_01 (PCIe Atheros card 108mbps)

This is from Device manager on target machine doing a hot plug with Atheros card !! drivers load and all works fine.Obviously I get "104 error" on reboot with this card !!

Original Broadcom HP wifi card : Ven 14E4 Dev 4312 subsys 1361103C&REV_01

From .inf of "bcmwl5.inf" :

%BCM430M_DeviceDesc% = BCM43XM12, PCI\VEN_14E4&DEV_4312&SUBSYS_1361103C (confirmed via Device Manager)

Original HP BIOS Link (68TT2 F07) :

http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/Te ... ob-50961-1

I would be eternally grateful if you could get me closer to a solution as I was beginning to give up!!

Dink.

[semi]

hey Dink,

I still dont know what exactly your problem is...

Hey slim wait a minute, you haven't read the tutorial!!??

Ok it was a little bit tricky cause your fault was in your first step!

BCM43XM12, PCI\VEN_14E4&DEV_4312&SUBSYS_1361103C

was the wrong Id in your bcmwl5.inf

the correct one is:

BCM43XG11_NT60,PCI\VEN_14E4&DEV_4311&SUBSYS_1363103C

and so you can gathering a lot of interesting and nessery details...

Compressed Whitelist:

000008A0 00 5F 19 91 C3 E8 31 40 00 4B 80 00 FD 65 C0 00 AD 91 C3 E4 14 11 5F 43 ._....1@.K...e........_C
000008B8 3C 10 63 13 83 00 65 84 00 55 64 00 01 12 80 01 60 84 00 62 04 01 55 61 <.c...e..Ud.....`..b..Ua

ORIGINAL BIOS ID: (think 4 bytewise)
AD91C3E414115F433C106313

delteing the first 10000 Bytes in the 68TT2.BIN
(Only for testing during the patching try's to run the decompressor)
In your flashing file you must NOT deleting the FF's!

decompress it with the compdeconx.exe

Uncompressed Whitelist:

00000E28 BE 3C 65 BF 00 08 AD 91 C3 E4 14 11 43 3C 10 63 13 00 BE 3C 00 BF 00 65 .<e.........C<.c...<...e

Opps, they looks like the original Id's from the bcmwl5.inf E41411433C106313

use the ADDCC to change it...

ORIGINAL BIOS ID:
AD91C3E414115F433C106313

with OWN BIOS ID:
AD91C38C161C5F00581413E9

fix checksum in the same 00020100.dec on...
0000018D80 53 65 72 76 69 63 FF 65 20 42 6F 6F 74 57 61 FF 6B 65 20 4F 6E 20 4C 41 Servic.e BootWa.ke On LA

Checksum fix:

change 20426F6F745761FF with 0233BF34745761FF

test it with the compdeconx.exe

It looks like pretty good!

flash it in dos with the Rompaq.exe

if there is one single bit wrong, the Rompaq.exe will not flashing
and your engine will still booting!

so give it try, you have my blessings

Cheers Semi

[Dink]

Hi Semi
I have read what you've said with interest,but the tutorial that is supplied with ADDCC is not that clear to a HEX beginner (Especially when .pdf is missing ?? ) MY FAULT I sort of understand what you've put but I am still confused because this is where I began to get lost......
The Broadcom card that is fitted to my NX6325 is definitely this code below,as I have got it from Device Manager ,on the Details Tab,on the Lappy,I can supply "Prnt Scrn" of it to verify ?

PCI\VEN_14E4&DEV_4312&SUBSYS_1361103C

This is where I got confused the first time round and went back on myself many times thinking I'd made a mistake but its 4312 and not 4311 ??
Have HP got sneaky and made XP read this incorrectly to confuse the uninitiated ? please help me here,this is above me,but I'm willing to learn

Hope you can clarify this
Dink.
P.S. Just downloaded your link for ADDCC and got .pdf file,compdecon.exe and compdecw.exe that was not in my previous download ??,only had some html bitz ?? makes more sense and I'll try reading tonite when I'm home ,but I'm not a HEX man !!
Thanx again for bearing with me

[semi]

ok Dink, I think I know your problem now.

the first step is not called "find your running miniPCI card",
but rather "find the whitelist"!!

Its not proven that HP checks all bytes to verify the miniPCI Card.
Which makes also sense then your drivers .inf file contained so much
entries.

So lets take a look what the PCI VENDOR and SUBSYS ID´s really means.

Look at the PCI Search from http://www.modem-help.co.uk/search.php?id=

PCI\VEN_14E4&DEV_4312&SUBSYS_1361103C

HW ID MFC Vendor (Chipset/Modem) Page Type
14E4 Broadcom Broadcom Corp. PCI1 (Vendor ID)

PCI\VEN_14E4&DEV_4312&SUBSYS_1361103C

HW ID MFC Chipset Page Type
4312 Broadcom BCM4306 Dual-Band WLAN miniPCI+3 PCI2 (Device ID)

PCI\VEN_14E4&DEV_4312&SUBSYS_1361103C

* “14E4” - Vendor ID
* “4312” - Device ID
* “103C” - SubVendor ID
* “1361” - SubDevice ID

HW ID MFC Vendor (Chipset/Modem) Page Type
103C HP Hewlett Packard Company PCI1 (Vendor ID)
103C HP Hewlett Packard Company PCI3 (SubVendor ID)

it seems as is nobody interested what the SubDevice ID 1361 means.
This is a further indication for my fiction from above.

It is only importantly to knowledge which manufacturer and which Sub manufacturer your card is from.

I am positive that if you only change the Vendor ID and SubVendor ID
in your bios file, it will exactly the same function!

You must be occupied with HEX, to understand it!

Good luck

[Dink]

Semi
Thanx for being patient with me, the more I read the .pdf and your helpful responses the more and more it seems to make sense.
You certainly know your HEX My first mission is to get a PLCC socket and a spare BIOS chip off Ebay ,I doubt it will be this side of Xmas now but as soon as I do ,I will try your recommendations and will let you know if I am sucessful ,as I'm sure there are others out there that would like to do the same

Thankyou so much ,its nice to know that there are still normal/helpful people out there in this twisted world we live in now

Dink

[fa001]

semi,

I have read through you work and it is great. However is there a way to generalize the modification method? I have a nc8000 that I would like to put a Broadcom card into. The nc8000 uses the 68BAR bios and this does not work with your posted method.

[semi]

hi fa001,

No and more's the pity.

The nc8000 uses the 68BAR bios and this does not work with your posted method.

Thats not true!! You are only inable! sorry, but this is only my opinion!

the decompressor works smoothly.

and you can find all your supported Device ID's on the HP site
NC8000 Drivers Site

take a look in the .inf files of the drivers.

ust the ADDCC and you can do it work!

Cheers Semi

[fa001]

Well, it could well be me.
The first thing that I found is that I was using the ROM image from the boot floppy image. When I use the ROM file from the HPQFlash image I can get further.
However when I get to the part in ADDCC where I enter the bytes for correction it crashes. I get that it has encountered a problem and needs to close.
Any suggestions?

[fa001]

Progress??
Well it seems that ADDCC wants hex digits to be capital letters. That solved the crash problem.
However now when I put in a string to correct the checksum the process completes but the checksum of the patched file and original file are still different. So I guess I need to keep trying different strings.

[ipe]

I had no progress with my nx9420 bios. Anyway, thank you so much, semi, for your help.

Felipe

[fa001]

I have successfully modified the bios of an nx5000 laptop to accept an Intel 2100 wireless card. The ADDCC process does work.

[oddi]

Hi Semi, if u have free time for me plss explain me how change checksum step by step, tnx.
NC6000, bios is F.15

That is after click buton "Change in file"
now i stop here:


I wanna change this

E6008680BF431086802225A3 checksum AD8E431B

with

E6001418BF010214186025A3 checksum 4589C241

BIOS Notation: 1418010214186025

checksum difference: 68 04 80 DA

I not found this bytestrings : 68 04 80 DA

pls help. tnx