Extend compatibility?

[mirh]

I figured out there are basically tools to edit BIOS from ati rage series to polaris.. But it's lame having to reinvent the wheel every damn time a new generation comes out, or having to fight for info lost in the dawn of time (thank god, at least we are FOSS now)

This being the latest updated editor on earth, I thought it was a good idea to start from here.

In other news, also, no tool seems to support APU vbioses.

[OneB1t]

i will try to continue after VEGA release if that card is good upgrade path ;)

[mirh]

I was hoping for more compatibility going backwards, but whatever

[OneB1t]

"never backward only forward" :D

[mirh]

My laptops is! D=
EDIT: anyway, I hope you'll be able to get support from anybody else also wanting to endeavor in this enterprise

[mpollice]

Now look at that, its you again @mirh ;-) What a coincidence.
You are right that when it comes to VBIOS editors reinventing the wheel is quite popular. At least one has to be grateful that recently there is a trend to release the source code (unfortunately not with all community tools, but as I said its a rising trend).

As for why I'm hijacking this issue, I'd like to have support added for Bonaire, which is part of the same architectural generation of GCN. Or to be more specific you should change the code that won't load an unsupported BIOS image, as I was able to open Bonaire images with this tool just fine once I changed the supported device IDs. Here is a suggestion how to best handle it without making it a lot of work: Much like https://github.com/caa82437/PolarisBiosEditor make a prompt telling the user it is an unsupported device ID with the options to continue or cancel.

Also there is a fork of this tool adding support for Tonga (3rd gen GCN), which seems to be only minor changes. Maybe there is the possibility of merging this functionality, look here https://github.com/Hedzin/TongaBiosReader (@mirh you forgot this editor in your otherwise quite comprehensive compilation).

Lastly please consider adding a license to the repository. This seems to be another common things of the hardware tuning community to just throw source code out there without bothering with a license. Generally if you want others to do any kind of modification but have them credit you the MIT license is a good choice. It also disclaims any liability, so if people fry their GPUs they can't legally target you over it. Other options would be the GPL (additionally mandates distribution of source code which MIT doesn't) or even CC0 (meaning you put it in the public domain and don't want to be credited). Here you can find some useful information: https://choosealicense.com/
The problem if you don't choose a license is, that the code is copyrighted to you and people wanting to do modifications don't know what they may do with it.

Anyway, I might be able to give you some pointers @mirh if you told us which GPU your laptop has. Keep in mind that the main reason why laptop and integrated GPU BIOS modding basically isn't a thing (aside from low performance) is that the BIOS image is part of the main BIOS image and thus modding it is more complicated and could potentially brick your mainboard if you make a mistake. Whereas with discrete GPUs it is always possible to flash it as a slave GPU to recover.

[OneB1t]

there is full support for any forks/upgrades and i dont really think there is need for any "licence"
if i dont want to share my work i just kept it for myself ;)

[mirh]

Oh my, christmas feels like come earlier this year.
You can find every info about my laptop here (really too much to remember and sum-up!).
It's not really something I still need, but I do know there are people with less potato APU/mobile systems that would still be quite interested (be it clocks/voltages or even just fan profiles).
Flashing/re-uploading the image would then look too much daring imo (expect any assumption to hold for computer firmware? lol). Though at least reading and editing is what seemed realistically doable.

Anyway, I also have a discrete Capo Verde on my desktop, if this could interest anybody.

if i dont want to share my work i just kept it for myself

That's how common sense work. Unfortunately there are some killjoys that think otherwise.

[mpollice]

I briefly looked into your laptop but it seems to be a can of worms. Also the GPU architecture is part of the VLIW5 generation (i.e. Radeon HD 5000 series), so your best bet is the BIOS editor called RBE available at techpowerup (no source for this one).

Cape Verde is part of the 1st gen GCN architecture (HD 7000 series except 7790 which is GCN2). GPU BIOS of GCN1 differs from following gens materially. There is a discontinued editor in the techpowerup forums: https://www.techpowerup.com/forums/threads/radeon-hd77xx-78xx-79xx-bios-editor.183423/ Afaik source code was never published so to add support for this generation would involve considerable reverse engineering work.

@OneB1t I can only politely ask you to commit a LICENSE file as explained here https://help.github.com/articles/licensing-a-repository/
It is not hard, doesn't hurt and makes things clearer for people who already had to deal with such issues beforehand. To me it seems you have a quite clear understanding what should be possible but apparently don't want to make this explicit.

[mirh]

I briefly looked into your laptop but it seems to be a can of worms.

Potatoes always seemed to me more proper creatures, but w/e

Also the GPU architecture is part of the VLIW5 generation (i.e. Radeon HD 5000 series), so your best bet is the BIOS editor called RBE available at techpowerup (no source for this one).

It doesn't work. And actually I presume the real challenge is the (somehow?) different structure of the bios file. Of course on my laptop it wouldn't really be motivated by anything more than "just because", but IMO, the same oddity is quite likely similar on newer apus (VLIW or not) too.

Afaik source code was never published so to add support for this generation would involve considerable reverse engineering work.

Or general guess work over the bios like I'd expect Hedzin, OneB1t and others already did once?

[kizwan]

It doesn't work.

Meaning RBE can't open it? I can load the K53BY SEYMOUR XT vbios in RBE. It start with "55 AA", followed by vbios ROM size (length 1 byte; convert the value to DEC & multiply with 512 = ROM size).

[mirh]

Well, some fields seems to be read, but it closes everything once it fails to read (and complain about) clock settings.
I just emailed BAGZZlash anyway, worst case he won't answer. Best, who knows, perhaps he will open the sauce? C:

[psyborg55]

hi

any progress on APU vbios or any known tool out there that works with these? device is [AMD/ATI] Wani [Radeon R5/R6/R7 Graphics] (rev cc)

[mirh]

There are many new tools/forks, but nope.
It really seems like "vbios gurus" don't care much about APUs.
Btw anybody interested could find one straight at the source.

[psyborg55]

well, i loaded fw blob extracted from system bios of this laptop and after dismissing warnings it shows correct PCI IDs and SUBIDs.. unfortuantely that is the only info shown correct. all other values look insane

[methanoid]

@OneB1t talking of extending, any chance to support W5100 (Bonaire) cards - the editor loads them but warns unsupported. I'm thinking to buy one for experimenting - looks like it kinda works but voltages are not showing as actual volt values???