Hey. Following the story of yesterday, where I found a few versions of Phoenix BIOS tools while scrubbing on my HDD archives... I also found a few versions of the AMI BIOS firmware tools, which I guess are worth of archiving too.

*AMI.ROMUtils.v800, which probably isn't useful for our retro purposes, but doesn't harm to have a backup of these, just in case.

*AMI.ROMUtils.v627.10. Now, this one is more interesting. As it's name says, it was taken from Core v627 BIOS sources, and has an AMIBCP which was especifically designed for v6xx ROMs, and has full support for stuff as HiFLEX and WinBIOS. I was able to edit with it a PCCHIPS M710 ROM, which otherwise was corrupted when edited with later DOSExtended AMIBCP v7.x. Check you can't insert or delete modules with these older versions of AMIBCP, so they included both AMIMM and AMIEMBED tools for module manipulation. AMIEMBED is more powerful than AMIMM, as it can full manipulate (extract and insert) the "SLAB" (RUNTIME) module. Looks like AMIEMBED actually works with older versions of the core... I was able to edit modules on BIOSes as far as Pentium boards with it.

*AMIBCP_v6.21_v6.24T. These are even older versions of the ones included in the v627 toolset above. BCP621 goes back as 1994, so it should be able to edit later 486 and Pentium ROMs (as long as the manufactured didn't something tricky to their codebase customization). Ofc them have HiFLEX and WinBIOS support too. As with BCP from v627 toolset, you can't manipulate modules from the application. For that you can try with AMIMM or AMIEMBED from the suppplied v627 tools.

I also have a sort of sample OEM Adaptation Kits for AMIBIOS Core v800 and v627 (taken from some chinese BIOS book CDs, I guess was what PCCHIPS used to train their engineers, as the books mostly talk about SiS and RiSE chipsets, used throughfully by that company to create cheap as peanuts boards). But I will not post them unless forum mods say it is safe to share these here.

hyoenmadan wrote on 2021-09-13, 22:51:

Hey. Following the story of yesterday, where I found a few versions of Phoenix BIOS tools while scrubbing on my HDD archives... I also found a few versions of the AMI BIOS firmware tools, which I guess are worth of archiving too.

Thanks ! By chance are you on MDL ? Just curious....

First of all, thanks hyoenmadan for contributing those tools to this seemingly never-ending quest of old AMIBCPs!

Now, I tried AMIBCP v6.21 with a couple of ROMs I had at hand. These were dumped from 486 motherboards, a HiFlex from 1994 and a WinBIOS from 1995. Unfortunately on both of them I got the dreaded "ROM Header not found !" error when trying the "LOAD BIOS FROM DISK FILE" option. The same happened with 6.24, but I had tried that version before.

Maybe I'm doing something wrong here, but I'll look for other ROMs from that era to test, and let's see if others post their feedback about the tools.

Horun wrote on 2021-09-13, 23:22:

Thanks ! By chance are you on MDL ? Just curious....

I have identity there, yes 😉. But I don't use it that much these days.

hyoenmadan wrote on 2021-09-13, 22:51:

Hey. Following the story of yesterday, where I found a few versions of Phoenix BIOS tools while scrubbing on my HDD archives... […]
Show full quote

Hey. Following the story of yesterday, where I found a few versions of Phoenix BIOS tools while scrubbing on my HDD archives... I also found a few versions of the AMI BIOS firmware tools, which I guess are worth of archiving too.

*AMI.ROMUtils.v800, which probably isn't useful for our retro purposes, but doesn't harm to have a backup of these, just in case.

*AMI.ROMUtils.v627.10. Now, this one is more interesting. As it's name says, it was taken from Core v627 BIOS sources, and has an AMIBCP which was especifically designed for v6xx ROMs, and has full support for stuff as HiFLEX and WinBIOS. I was able to edit with it a PCCHIPS M710 ROM, which otherwise was corrupted when edited with later DOSExtended AMIBCP v7.x. Check you can't insert or delete modules with these older versions of AMIBCP, so they included both AMIMM and AMIEMBED tools for module manipulation. AMIEMBED is more powerful than AMIMM, as it can full manipulate (extract and insert) the "SLAB" (RUNTIME) module. Looks like AMIEMBED actually works with older versions of the core... I was able to edit modules on BIOSes as far as Pentium boards with it.

*AMIBCP_v6.21_v6.24T. These are even older versions of the ones included in the v627 toolset above. BCP621 goes back as 1994, so it should be able to edit later 486 and Pentium ROMs (as long as the manufactured didn't something tricky to their codebase customization). Ofc them have HiFLEX and WinBIOS support too. As with BCP from v627 toolset, you can't manipulate modules from the application. For that you can try with AMIMM or AMIEMBED from the suppplied v627 tools.

I also have a sort of sample OEM Adaptation Kits for AMIBIOS Core v800 and v627 (taken from some chinese BIOS book CDs, I guess was what PCCHIPS used to train their engineers, as the books mostly talk about SiS and RiSE chipsets, used throughfully by that company to create cheap as peanuts boards). But I will not post them unless forum mods say it is safe to share these here.

Thanks for posting these versions! 6.24T uses the HiFlex default instead of the Color default, and can edit the Hardware Monitor tab on BIOSes retaining support for WinBIOS and Hiflex client editing. It also doesn't have the I/O header error which a previous version of 6.24 non T had on here, meaning you can load a BIOS from within the program. 6.21 is very close to 6.24 and there isn't much difference between the two, aside from one being older and maybe slower. 6.24E is a dud and does not work, attempting to load a bios but then blocking you off from loading it with an Evaluation message even when the date is set back. Perhaps someone could remove the Evaluation block on 6.24E and W5.11E (posted here a while ago, broken and also evaluation) to get something useful out of them, especially as W5.11E is the only availible version of AMIBCP 5 on the Internet AFAIK.

Gah, just spent far too long fussing with an archived partition image in xubuntu, thought there was something wrong with it because lubuntu mounts it automagically, when xubuntu won't, and won't mount from inside parted... well so much for the "easy" way, mount did it of course, doh. Anyhoo, I thought it was THE glorious treasure trove of BIOS modding tools, but turned out just to be Award stuff. Not to get y'all's hopes up, but there's another drive I need to find and check out, don't have a timetable though, don't hold your breath, save your appetite or cancel your prostate exam though, could be sometime around the next summer olympics plus or minus 5 years.

BitWrangler wrote on 2021-09-14, 18:46:

Gah, just spent far too long fussing with an archived partition image in xubuntu, thought there was something wrong with it because lubuntu mounts it automagically, when xubuntu won't, and won't mount from inside parted... well so much for the "easy" way, mount did it of course, doh. Anyhoo, I thought it was THE glorious treasure trove of BIOS modding tools, but turned out just to be Award stuff. Not to get y'all's hopes up, but there's another drive I need to find and check out, don't have a timetable though, don't hold your breath, save your appetite or cancel your prostate exam though, could be sometime around the next summer olympics plus or minus 5 years.

Award stuff, though not for this thread (which talks about amibcp) could still be useful. There is another thread about BIOS modding tools i've seen, maybe you could post it there.

Thanks for the reviews guys, I'm glad at least one of the BCPs provided worked as intended.

As for the "Header not found!" error, I've checked a bit, and it turns out AMIBIOS Core 5 and downwards have a different "SLAB" (INIT) module header structure. BCP6xx expects to find an "AMIBIOSC" string, in uncompressed form, near the end of the BOOTBLOCK region, and below the ESCD defaults area, as shown in the pic (from a Pentium board ROM called 5vim001.bin, which works just fine with BCP621 and BCP624T).

This seems to be an standard since BIOS core v6xx and upwards, But I've checked older BIOS cores (namely '94 and '93 core dates)... And the structure is everything but standard.

For example, PCEm hot-433.ami (dated '94, looks like core v5xx) has the string in middle of the rom, at what looks like the end of the "SLAB" module. BCP6xx doesn't seem to like that...

Our next example, PCEm ami486.bin (dated '93, probably core v3xx or v4xx), doesn't have the "AMIBIOSC" string at all, and the modules seem all in uncompressed form. Is clear this will not work with BCP6xx.

And finally, Nexgen AMI BIOSes are compressed, but them don't have the "AMIBIOSC" string at all, so them will not work with BCP6xx, as it doesn't know how to uncompress the modules without that.

In resume... Looks like versions of the BCP program specific to the core them are shipped, are truly needed to manage the ROMs produced by these codebases. Unfortunately, by checking the evidence, we can conclude these programs aren't retrocompatible at all (in a sense, that would explain why core v6xx roms get potentially corrupted when edited by the popular DOSExtended BCP7xx program, even if at first it looks like them were opened succesfully).

Here's some recreations of AMIBCP 4.2 (wbcp40.exe) in action, found inside of a wordperfect format AMI WinBIOS chipset manual. These come from an archive of the AMI FTP, which can be found here (https://ia601602.us.archive.org/view_archive. … atrends.com.tar, winbios chipset manuals are inside of the "other_manuals" folder, the files are .zip files with renamed extensions with the wordperfect doc inside)
There are other manuals for other AMIBIOS cores too, so perhaps there are more screenshots inside those that i haven't found.

Edit: This also confirms that wbcp40.exe can open 06/25/94 cores.

Uploaded Borg Number One BIOS Tool Collection to archive org software. Search bnobtcv5
also posted AMIBCP v2.25beta for Windows in this topic: Re: AMIBIOS Modding (Looking for AMIBCP for Windows 2.x)
figured I should include the info here for those following this topic...

added a few screen shots from some old versions off a russian site(no did not check to see if they were already posted) and they did not have these versions....

This is the evaluation version of BCPW511, i dont know what are it's limitations.

CachoAlpuy wrote on 2022-12-28, 15:35:

This is the evaluation version of BCPW511, i dont know what are it's limitations.

this is broken, it just shows Incompatible BIOS Header when loading a bios.

I'm sorry for the bump.
I'm usually using amibcp76 to modify pentium 4 era bios, adding updated microcodes and unhide bios options.
Sadly I noticed that those version seem to be a bit buggy, when open the bios menus they don't show then voice name and I have to unhide every option.
The resulting bios works but always seem a bit unstable.
Is there a version which supports those newer bios (2003-2004) without being amibios8?

Nemo1985 wrote on 2023-04-01, 08:50:

I'm sorry for the bump. I'm usually using amibcp76 to modify pentium 4 era bios, adding updated microcodes and unhide bios optio […]
Show full quote

I'm sorry for the bump.
I'm usually using amibcp76 to modify pentium 4 era bios, adding updated microcodes and unhide bios options.
Sadly I noticed that those version seem to be a bit buggy, when open the bios menus they don't show then voice name and I have to unhide every option.
The resulting bios works but always seem a bit unstable.
Is there a version which supports those newer bios (2003-2004) without being amibios8?

As far as i know, you still have to use the dos utilities to open up those ones. Maybe a beta version of AMIBCP8 might read them but it's not likely.

explorerdotexe wrote on 2023-04-01, 09:41:

Nemo1985 wrote on 2023-04-01, 08:50:

I'm sorry for the bump. I'm usually using amibcp76 to modify pentium 4 era bios, adding updated microcodes and unhide bios optio […]
Show full quote

I'm sorry for the bump.
I'm usually using amibcp76 to modify pentium 4 era bios, adding updated microcodes and unhide bios options.
Sadly I noticed that those version seem to be a bit buggy, when open the bios menus they don't show then voice name and I have to unhide every option.
The resulting bios works but always seem a bit unstable.
Is there a version which supports those newer bios (2003-2004) without being amibios8?

As far as i know, you still have to use the dos utilities to open up those ones. Maybe a beta version of AMIBCP8 might read them but it's not likely.

I see. Well probably a version suitable to modify those bios didn't leave ami offices...
That's what I get with latest available amibcp dos version:

hyoenmadan wrote on 2021-09-13, 22:51:

Hey. Following the story of yesterday, where I found a few versions of Phoenix BIOS tools while scrubbing on my HDD archives... […]
Show full quote

Hey. Following the story of yesterday, where I found a few versions of Phoenix BIOS tools while scrubbing on my HDD archives... I also found a few versions of the AMI BIOS firmware tools, which I guess are worth of archiving too.

*AMI.ROMUtils.v800, which probably isn't useful for our retro purposes, but doesn't harm to have a backup of these, just in case.

*AMI.ROMUtils.v627.10. Now, this one is more interesting. As it's name says, it was taken from Core v627 BIOS sources, and has an AMIBCP which was especifically designed for v6xx ROMs, and has full support for stuff as HiFLEX and WinBIOS. I was able to edit with it a PCCHIPS M710 ROM, which otherwise was corrupted when edited with later DOSExtended AMIBCP v7.x. Check you can't insert or delete modules with these older versions of AMIBCP, so they included both AMIMM and AMIEMBED tools for module manipulation. AMIEMBED is more powerful than AMIMM, as it can full manipulate (extract and insert) the "SLAB" (RUNTIME) module. Looks like AMIEMBED actually works with older versions of the core... I was able to edit modules on BIOSes as far as Pentium boards with it.

*AMIBCP_v6.21_v6.24T. These are even older versions of the ones included in the v627 toolset above. BCP621 goes back as 1994, so it should be able to edit later 486 and Pentium ROMs (as long as the manufactured didn't something tricky to their codebase customization). Ofc them have HiFLEX and WinBIOS support too. As with BCP from v627 toolset, you can't manipulate modules from the application. For that you can try with AMIMM or AMIEMBED from the suppplied v627 tools.

I also have a sort of sample OEM Adaptation Kits for AMIBIOS Core v800 and v627 (taken from some chinese BIOS book CDs, I guess was what PCCHIPS used to train their engineers, as the books mostly talk about SiS and RiSE chipsets, used throughfully by that company to create cheap as peanuts boards). But I will not post them unless forum mods say it is safe to share these here.

Thanks for sharing this, is this able to allow us to customize memory timings?