BIOS hacking \ VOGONS

BIOS hacking

Topic actions

First post, by 2fort5r

Posted on 2014-08-29, 07:04

2fort5r Offline

Rank Member

Rank: Member
Posts: 286
Joined: 2009-08-17, 11:32

Would it be possible to hack the BIOS of a computer to add features or change implementation of existing features? BIOS files for flashing are presumably uncompressed and unencrypted so I assume it wouldn't be hard to disassemble them to see how they work and what they do. Has anyone done this? How would it be done?

Account retired. Now posting as Errius.

Reply 1 of 4, by mr_bigmouth_502

Posted on 2014-08-29, 07:27

mr_bigmouth_502 Offline

Rank Oldbie

Rank: Oldbie
Posts: 1959
Joined: 2009-05-16, 19:43
Location: Canada

There is an entire website focused on this, though unfortunately most of the mods on it are kinda blah. https://www.bios-mods.com/ I did once manage to find the retail equivalent bios for an old Acer board though, which was kinda cool.

Reply 2 of 4, by 2fort5r

Posted on 2014-08-29, 07:36

2fort5r Offline

Rank Member

Rank: Member
Posts: 286
Joined: 2009-08-17, 11:32

Thanks for the link. I'd guess overclocking would be a big motivation for this.

Account retired. Now posting as Errius.

Reply 3 of 4, by mr_bigmouth_502

Posted on 2014-08-30, 04:25

mr_bigmouth_502 Offline

Rank Oldbie

Rank: Oldbie
Posts: 1959
Joined: 2009-05-16, 19:43
Location: Canada

It's mainly focused on running newer CPUs on older boards, and removing wifi card whitelists from notebook BIOSes. I've gone there many times looking for overclocking-related mods, but they seem to be rare.

Reply 4 of 4, by Holering

Posted on 2014-08-30, 12:00

Holering Offline

You might want to look at http://www.uwe-sieber.de/util_e.html. I think there's some source code there. He has a pciset utility (pciset.zip) to change pci registers; this might give some hints on what you're looking for.

Go to top of page Go to top of page

Back to General Old Hardware