Archived from groups: alt.comp.periphs.mainboard.asus (More info?)

I updated the BIOS on my P4B266 from 1010 to 1011 (beta 3) so that my new
Northwood 2.6-MHz (400-MHz FSB) Pentium 4 would be properly supported, and
that problem was solved just fine. However, the Asus full-screen logo no
longer appears, even though it's enabled in the BIOS.

It's really not a major problem, but that full-screen logo gave my LCD
monitor a brief moment to "sync" with the video signal for that resolution
before the POST screens appeared. Now that the logo is no longer there, the
first POST screen jumps all over the place while the monitor is sync-ing,
and by the time it's done, the boot process has moved on to the next screen.

Anyone else notice the missing full-screen Asus logo after updating to 1011?

Archived from groups: alt.comp.periphs.mainboard.asus (More info?)

In article <16mdneiJSqT2yqffRVn-3w@comcast.com>, "Hackworth"
<NoSpam4Me@spamless.net> wrote:

> I updated the BIOS on my P4B266 from 1010 to 1011 (beta 3) so that my new
> Northwood 2.6-MHz (400-MHz FSB) Pentium 4 would be properly supported, and
> that problem was solved just fine. However, the Asus full-screen logo no
> longer appears, even though it's enabled in the BIOS.
>
> It's really not a major problem, but that full-screen logo gave my LCD
> monitor a brief moment to "sync" with the video signal for that resolution
> before the POST screens appeared. Now that the logo is no longer there, the
> first POST screen jumps all over the place while the monitor is sync-ing,
> and by the time it's done, the boot process has moved on to the next screen.
>
> Anyone else notice the missing full-screen Asus logo after updating to 1011?

Well, I just had some fun hacking various versions of BIOS.

The 1011ddr3.zip BIOS file is missing the p4b266b.bmp component.
A BIOS consists of a file system, plus some components at fixed
locations at the end of the BIOS file. In an Award BIOS, the file
system is a collection of LHA compressed modules, each one begins
with "-LHA-", which you can see with a hex editor.

An older BIOS has a copy of the full screen logo in it.

To repair this, see your manual. There is mention of "Mylogo",
which is a program for inserting a BMP into the BIOS file.

Due to the LHA compression used for the BIOS modules, the 153600
bytes of a 640x480x4bit BMP plus 60 bytes header/trailer, can be
compressed down to 15522 bytes. This could easily be fitted into
your BIOS file, because it has unused space from 1EABC to 31000 hex
(75076 bytes decimal). In other word, there is room for five copies
of the original BMP file.

Now, "tool chain" is an issue here. I used the splitawd program from
the CTMC package, to break up the original BIOS. It refused to
extract the BMP, so I had to learn the format of a -lh5- file and
snip the exact chunk of bytes containing the BMP. Running LHA on
it and extracting finally worked. This gives the 153660 byte BMP
file. The header of this file contains the string "AWBM", which
stands for something like Award BMP format. I don't have any tools
that recognize the format, so I had to snip the head and tail off
the file, so I had a 153600 byte raw file to work with. Using just
the raw nibbles in the file, I can see a picture of a circle with
the P2B266 in large letters in the center. The picture is repeated
four times, implying the Award format uses a weird interleaving to
make the image.

To use Asus logo, I expect you'll need an "ordinary" BMP file, and
I doubt you would have any luck feeding p4b266b.bmp . If I was
doing this, I would fire up a paint tool, make a 640x480x4bit
picture, and fill the picture with a single color (like blue, so
you will get a "blue screen" :-) . Save that file and follow the
instructions in the Asus manual. Using the logo.exe program,
you should be able to insert the new BMP. (That is, unless it
expects to remove the old logo file, and the program freaks
because it cannot find that component in the 1011ddr3 file.)

One problem with inserting logos, is many hackers end up with a
logo, but the aspect ratio is wrong, or the logo tiles the screen,
instead of filling it. If you make a logo which is a solid color,
you won't have a problem in that respect. The main advantage of
using a single color, is the BMP will compress highly when it
is made into a LHA file and inserted into the BIOS file, so there
is no danger of running out of room in the BIOS.

P.S. - Usual caveats about flashing a bad BIOS image into the
board and killing it. Either get a BIOS Savior for your board
(that is a tool that has a second BIOS chip on it, as a backup
BIOS - see ioss.com.tw), or be prepared to fork out a few bucks
to badflash.com if the process goes wrong. After the Asus logo
program is finished inserting the BMP, compare the new file to
the original 1011ddr3, to see if the structure of the file has
been maintained. Maybe then it will be safe to flash.

Good luck,
Paul