[ltp] Replacing the bios bootsplash?

[Joachim Breitner]

Hi,

I am back from the dead, and ready to share my experience. But first: it
worked, without any Windows or floppies. :-)

I got the bios upgrade diskette from the ibm site. It was an .exe... but
no, no Windows executable, a OS/2-Executable (well, it's IBM after all).
And OS/2-Executables don't run in wine. Also apt-get install dosemu
dosemu-freedos (for non-debian-users: Get dosemu and freedos somewhere
and make it work somehow).

With dosemu, I could run this executable. But this program unfortunately
needs a floppy drive to write to. So we dig into the linux toolbox and
find: The loopback device. A dd if=3D/dev/zero of=3D/tmp/floppy.bin bs=3D10=
24
count=3D1440 creates the floppy file, a losetup /dev/loop0 /tmp/floppy.bin
makes it look like a block device, and this block device is what we put
in the dosemu configuration as the floppy disk device. Now we can run
the extractor and it will happily make /tmp/floppy.bin a floppy image.

This floppy image can be mounted (mount -o
loop,umask=3D000 /tmp/floppy.bin /mnt/tmp), and now we can read the
readme.txt. To replace the logo file, we create a 16bit 640x480 BMP
file, save it as logo.bmp and run logo.bat. Just kidding, you can't run
batch files in linux, but - after testing the bitmap, which we just
don't do - that batchfile only runs "prepare.exe logo.scr". This program
won't run in dosemu, but "wine prepare.exe logo.scr". Now there should
be a logo.mod. If so, you are set, unmount /mnt/tmp and go on.

Now we should put the image on a floppy and boot. Since we don't have a
floppy (and no floppy driver after all), we use a CD-R (or CD-RW for the
cheap ones, like me) and burn it like that:
cd /tmp; mkisofs -b floppy.bin floppy.bin | cdrecord -dev=3D<irgendwas> -

If this worked, you can reboot from the cdrom and the ibm tool should
start. After confirming that you checked a few things, you get asked
whether you want to replace the boot image. Yes, you do. It will then
flash the bios, which will take about a minute. And since you know that
any problem during this minute might break your thinkpad, if you have
weak nerves, go and do something else instead of watching a
non-changeing screen.

Suddenly the laptop turns itself off. Hopefully, it was finished - in my
case it was. When booting, I got my bootsplash picuture (with some ugly
text "To abort booting, press Enter" or something in the lower left
corner). Unfortunately, you don't see it really long, but it's better
than some advertisement, so it was worth it.

Good luck!

Joachim

Am Dienstag, den 02.11.2004, 19:05 +0100 schrieb Joachim Breitner:
> Hi,
>=20
> Am Dienstag, den 02.11.2004, 18:32 +0100 schrieb Joachim Breitner:
> > > Create a BIOS update diskette and read the readme.txt file included. =
 This
> > > file describes all required steps to replace the logo.
> >=20
> > Would be interesting. I can't find it in the .txt accompanying the .exe
> > file I can download from ibm. Unfortunatelly, I have no way to convert
> > that .exe file into a floppy image. What can I do?
>=20
> Well, I got the bios floppies extracted (using some hacks with dosemu
> and loopback devices).
>=20
> The image I used is the grub-theme from debbblue, converted to a 16 bit
> BMP using imagemagick.
>=20
> Now, I will try to flash my bios using a rewriteable CD. Tell you more
> later..
>=20
> Joachim
> --=20
> Joachim Breitner
>   e-Mail: mail@joachim-breitner.de
>   Homepage: http://www.joachim-breitner.de
>   ICQ#: 74513189
> Bitte senden Sie mir keine Word- oder PowerPoint-Anh=E4nge.
> Siehe http://www.fsf.org/philosophy/no-word-attachments.de.html
--=20
Joachim "nomeata" Breitner
  mail: mail@joachim-breitner.de | ICQ# 74513189 | GPG-Key: 4743206C
  JID: joachimbreitner@amessage.de | http://www.joachim-breitner.de/
  Debian Developer: nomeata@debian.org
Please avoid sending me Word or PowerPoint attachments.
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