gregoa's blog

Thinkpad BIOS upgrade with own boot splash image

Some introductory remarks

• This is not a tutorial but simply notes of what I did.
• Use the hints at your own risk!
• Older recipes that work with downloading/mounting/changing floppy images don't work anymore for newer BIOS upgrades because IBM/Lenovo don't offer floppy images any longer (& they'd be larger than floppies anyway).
• The following steps were made on an R60e (model 0658) running Debian GNU/Linux unstable.
• Thanks to Philipp Spitzer for helping me with the research, realisation, and documentation of this project.

Get ISO file with CD image with firmware from IBM/Lenovo Website

• http://www.ibm.com/
• Example name: 7euj11uc.iso

Extract the content to a folder

# mkdir /tmp/iso 
# mkdir /tmp/cdimage 
# mount -o loop 7euj11uc.iso /tmp/iso 
# cp /tmp/iso/* /tmp/cdimage 
# umount /tmp/iso

Create or download a .bmp splash screen

BMP format, 640 x 480. 4 Bytes per Pixel

Example:

$ wget http://asuka.fi/u/jpaalija/stuff/filestorage/ibm-tux.png
$ convert ibm-tux.png [-geometry 640x480 -colors 16] logo.bmp
$ file logo.bmp 
logo.bmp: PC bitmap data, Windows 3.x format, 640 x 480 x 4

Prepare the logo.bmp with the prepare.exe from the IBM/Lenovo ISO image

Example:

$ cp logo.bmp /tmp/cdimage
$ cd /tmp/cdimage
$ wine prepare.exe logo.scr
$ cd -

Get Freedos Floppy Disc Image

• Example name: fdos1440.img
• or a DOS 6.22 or a Win98 boot floppy or http://home.arcor.de/mschierlm/bootdisk/
• basically anything that can boot and offers the rest of the CD as a drive

Create an ISO file to prepare burning

$ cp fdos1440.img /tmp/cdimage
$ genisoimage -b fdos1440.img -U -o newiso.iso /tmp/cdimage # mkisofs on other/older distributions

Burn it

$ wodim newiso.iso # cdrecord on other/older distributions

Boot from the CD and flash the BIOS

• Change to the drive containing the flash stuff (often R: or Z:)
• Run FLASH2.EXE /U /L:LOGO.MOD or lcreflsh.bat, if updated

Updates

Good news: On updates (i.e. if you flash a new BIOS version with the downloaded ISO from IBM/Lenovo) the flash utility will detect the modified boot logo and ask if you want to keep it. So there's no need for taking the described procedure again for simple updates, only if you want to have a new boot logo.

Literature

• http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/BIOS_Upgrade
• http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/How_to_change_the_BIOS_bootsplash_screen
• README.TXT from the IBM/Lenovo ISO image

Extract from this README.txt:

[...]
 *  THIS VERSION OF THE FLASH UPDATE PROGRAM GIVES THE OPTION OF      *
 *  REPLACING (OR ELIMINATING) THE DEFAULT "LENOVO" IMAGE THAT IS     *
 *  DISPLAYED DURING SYSTEM START UP.  THE USER CAN SUBSTITUTE A      *
 *  16 COLOR WINDOWS BITMAP (.BMP) TO REPLACE THE DEFAULT IMAGE.      *
 *                                                                    *
 *  1. LOGO.BAT WILL ONLY WORK IN A MICROSOFT (R) OPERATING SYSTEM    *
 *     DOS WINDOW.                                                    *
 *  2. PREPARE YOUR IMAGE BY NAMING IT 'LOGO.BMP', AND COPY IT.       *
 *  3. GO TO THE DOS WINDOW. RUN LOGO.BAT TO COMPRESS AND PREPARE     *
 *     THE BITMAP FILE FOR FLASHING. LOGO.MOD IS THE RESULT.          *
 *  4. UPDATE ACCORDING TO INSTALLATION INSTRUCTIONS                  *
 *                                                                    *
 *  AFTER YOU UPDATE THE BIOS ON YOUR SYSTEM, YOUR LOGO WILL          *
 *  APPEAR ON THE STARTUP SCREEN.                                     *
 *                                                                    *
 *  SOME GUIDELINES FOR THESE IMAGES INCLUDE:                         *
 *                                                                    *
 *  1. THE COMPRESSED IMAGE FILE SIZE LIMITED TO 10KB.                *
 *  2. SIMPLE DESIGNS (THE IMAGE WILL BE COMPRESSED AND COMPLEX       *
 *     IMAGES DON'T COMPRESS WELL...)                                 *
 *  3. AN LENOVO LOGO IS USED BY DEFAULT, BUT A 16 COLOR 640x480      *
 *     WINDOWS .BMP FILE CAN BE USED INSTEAD.                         *
[...]
 *  FLASH PROGRAM OPTIONS FOR RDM ADMINISTRATOR                       *
 *  -------------------------------------------                       *
 *                                                                    *
 *  THIS CAN BE DONE BY MODIFYING THE LCREFLSH.BAT FILE               *
 *  ON THIS CD WITH THE FOLLOWING:                                    *
 *                                                                    *
 *   FLASH2.EXE /U option1 option2 ...                                *
 *                                                                    *
 *      OPTIONS                                                       *
 *      -------                                                       *
 *                                                                    *
 *      /L:LOGO.MOD  CUSTOM START UP IMAGE FILE NAME FOR THE LARGE    *
 *                   CENTERED IMAGE.                                  *
[...]

Additional links

• http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Talk:BIOS_Upgrade
• http://www.paul.sladen.org/thinkpad-r31/wifi-card-pci-ids.html
• http://www.math.ohio-state.edu/~easwaran/tech/bios_updates.html
• http://www.wimsbios.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=6929
  "At the command prompt, type "FLASH2.EXE /U" with no quotes then press enter. The program will automatically search for the files *.FL1 & *.FL2 and load the bios first then the platform file."
• Might be interesting, too: flashrom

gregoa, 2007-02-04/05, 2007-07-16, 2007-08-12, 2007-10-01