160GB: 07/12/2000-MVP3-586B-866-2A5LEQ1AC-00

liteFun · Thu Mar 10, 2005 6:26 pm

hell no. check http://humppa.pp.fi/current_and_beta_diff.txt i did with hexcmp. they are different.
as you see from it, first file is my current and is patched to have more than that beta which has mostly empty space.

Fri Mar 11, 2005 11:37 am

Could you zip your current file, please? My firewall does not seem to like your .BIN.

BTW, do not rely completely on hex comparisons or checksums to compare BIOSes as the same BIOS will show different hex contents once installed - the DMI area gets updated, so when you save it from your own machine it will differ from the distributed version unless the hardware configuration is identical.

liteFun · Sun Mar 13, 2005 10:55 am

http://humppa.pp.fi/currentbios.zip

liteFun · Mon Mar 14, 2005 9:52 am

umh.. i just got thought, i have system bios cached in bios setup, probably that difference i see is just cached bios... but still, bios file 256k but actual bios 128k?

Fri Mar 18, 2005 5:19 pm

OK....Your BIOS file:

Code: Select all

D:\Hardware\qdi>..\award\cbrom201 aptiva1.bin /d
CBROM V2.01A (C)Award Software 1999 All Rights Reserved.

              ********  aptiva1.bin BIOS component ********

 No. Item-Name         Original-Size   Compressed-Size Original-File-Name
===============================================================================
  0. System BIOS       20000h(128.00K)1437Dh(80.87K)m1_b30a.BIN
  1. XGROUP CODE       05040h(20.06K)03746h(13.82K)awardext.rom
  2. VRS ROM           0225Dh(8.59K)01489h(5.13K)ANTI_VIR.BIN
  3. PCI driver[A]     08000h(32.00K)04D9Dh(19.40K)ncr400.bin
  4. LOGO BitMap       1D223h(116.53K)10A40h(66.56K)qdi2.bmp

  Total compress code space  = 3437Dh(208.87K)
  Total compressed code size = 2E729h(185.79K)
  Remain compress code space = 05C54h(23.08K)

                      ** Micro Code Information **
Update ID  CPUID  |  Update ID  CPUID  |  Update ID  CPUID  |  Update ID  CPUID
------------------+--------------------+--------------------+------------------

QDI BIOS file:

Code: Select all

D:\Hardware\qdi>..\award\cbrom201 m1_b30a.bin /d
CBROM V2.01A (C)Award Software 1999 All Rights Reserved.

              ********  m1_b30a.bin BIOS component ********

 No. Item-Name         Original-Size   Compressed-Size Original-File-Name
================================================================================
  0. System BIOS       20000h(128.00K)1437Dh(80.87K)m1_b30a.BIN
  1. XGROUP CODE       05040h(20.06K)03746h(13.82K)awardext.rom
  2. VRS ROM           0225Dh(8.59K)01489h(5.13K)ANTI_VIR.BIN
  3. PCI driver[A]     08000h(32.00K)04D9Dh(19.40K)ncr400.bin
  4. LOGO BitMap       1D223h(116.53K)10A40h(66.56K)qdi2.bmp

  Total compress code space  = 3437Dh(208.87K)
  Total compressed code size = 2E729h(185.79K)
  Remain compress code space = 05C54h(23.08K)

                      ** Micro Code Information **
Update ID  CPUID  |  Update ID  CPUID  |  Update ID  CPUID  |  Update ID  CPUID
------------------+--------------------+--------------------+-------------------

This shows that it is the same BIOS. A modern BIOS will use 128KB when installed (E000-FFFF) but could be 512KB including flashy fulll-colour logo screens etc.