Bootlogo hack for AAO

Discussion in 'Modding and Customization' started by sam.hackint0sh, May 13, 2009.

  1. sam.hackint0sh

    harlley sathler

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    What is SLIC?
     
    harlley sathler, Aug 3, 2009
    #61
  2. sam.hackint0sh

    jerryt

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    It is the code in the Bios which tells the Operating System whether the computer is an OEM version.
    Slic 2.0 = Vista
    Slic 2.1 = Windows 7 and earlier

    OEM versions can be activated offline during installation.
     
    jerryt, Aug 3, 2009
    #62
  3. sam.hackint0sh

    Orbiting234

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    Orbiting234, Aug 3, 2009
    #63
  4. sam.hackint0sh

    judeh101

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    awnnn. thx anyways orbiting :)
    I'll just use the bootloader :p
     
    judeh101, Aug 4, 2009
    #64
  5. sam.hackint0sh

    mchipser

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    Here is mine..
    [​IMG]
     
    mchipser, Oct 2, 2009
    #65
  6. sam.hackint0sh

    luisin

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    Someone can tell me the steps to follow??? i hace AAO d250 but i cant do that!!!! howw?? please HEllp
     
    luisin, Oct 9, 2009
    #66
  7. sam.hackint0sh

    Mordanthanus

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    I also have the AOD250 version... Mine only has the Insyde logo, not the Intel one at all. I will be working on this over the next few days and I'll post my progress.

    Cheers.
     
    Mordanthanus, Oct 31, 2009
    #67
  8. sam.hackint0sh

    snowl

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    Thanks guys for this.


    I actually *havent* got my AAO150 yet, but once I do i'll be sure to use this. I already have my BIOS flash ready!

    Here is a picture of it, I can give it to you (w/out the writing, of course). The Insyde and Intel logo's are hidden. 82kbs in total :)
    [​IMG]
     
    snowl, Nov 1, 2009
    #68
  9. sam.hackint0sh

    JBenal

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    Thanks to Orbiting234 for the original BIOS mod and also Mopeto for the enhancements. I played with EzH2O and some graphics for a while, added my name and phone number, and came up with this. And didn't brick the AOA150 in the procress. :D

    [​IMG]
     
    JBenal, Nov 20, 2009
    #69
  10. sam.hackint0sh

    CZroe

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    My wallet was stolen but I just realized that I *DO* have a picture/scan of my driver's license that I'd like to incorporate. I don't have photoshop (nor have I ever used it) and all I have is MSPAINT and Irfanview for image manipulation. I want to whip up something nice with my motorcycle and my DL shown, possibly my MSF BRC (Motorcycle Safety Foundation Basic Rider Course) completion card too... the scan doesn't show my motorcycle Class-M endorsement. ;) The pic I want to use is already on a white background. The MSF card will have to be a scan of a copy. If anyone could use Photoshop to clean it up, perhaps make it look like clean vector graphics (line art) or something, I'd appreciate it! I've done lots of things with MSPAINT and Irfanview that I shouldn't have been able to do, so a little help with he DL (cleaning up the edge) and the MSF card is probably all I need.

    I don't have a scan of the MSF card yet but I will get to work on that.

    Actually, I may as well ask this here too: can anyone turn my P-A forum sig banner into one with a clear background like this guy and this guy?

    I've had the same issue start when installing a1ctl (Aspire one Control). Seconds after starting the program or Windows with the program auto-starting, my system would just shut off instantly.

    Edit: AND I've had the same issue every time I've flashed my BIOS during this little diversion. Yes, removing the battery and power works like a charm! *thumbsup*
     
    CZroe, Feb 24, 2010
    #70
  11. sam.hackint0sh

    Swarvey Moderator

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    Have done your sig banner, check your PM's
     
    Swarvey, Feb 24, 2010
    #71
  12. sam.hackint0sh

    CZroe

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    You are AWESOME! FWIW, it's the smallest, cheapest sportbike they make (Ninja 250R; paid $3,500 USD NEW), but I still love it!

    Anyway, here is my MSPAINT+Irfanview progress so far...

    [​IMG]

    The first image is the correct 16x9.375 aspect, though at a higher horizontal resolution than the final 640x480 (819x480). The second is the raw anamorphic 16.9.375 (640x480 square px). The last are my two overlays to replace the logos, though one is solid white (can't be seen in this image).

    I plan to move the Acer Aspire one logo to the center-top when I find my MSF completion card and add it.

    Edit: Hmm... the Acer Aspire one logo was cleaner than that earlier (easily visible when I tilt my LCD back). I'm going to need to redo it.
     
    CZroe, Feb 25, 2010
    #72
  13. sam.hackint0sh

    CZroe

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    Well, I fixed my screwey Acer logo and I believe I'm ready to try 'er out. *thumbsup*

    Does the 100KB limit apply to the total of all three images or just the main one? The 130x98 overlay BMP alone takes 40% of that. I saved and opened with the English version of EzH2O and all seems well.

    Edit:
    I used IrfanView's built-in RIOT plugin ("Save for Web") and told it to create a 99KB JPG. The resulting file was 97KB. I then saved the solid-white 102x49 overlay at the highest quality and it resulted in a miniscule 1KB. I threw them in there with the usual 38KB 130x98 BMP overly (bitmaps of the same resolution and color depth are always going to be the same size) and flashed. The only image I see on boot it the BMP overly. Everything else is black. I had to remove/restore my battery and power to get booted (related to the flash, but not a bad BIOS/corrupted image), so it doesn't appear that the images damaged anything functional for the BIOS to work. The images are just black for some reason (pressing ESC even shows you what's behind it), but that's hardly "bricking." Are other users really bricking or are they confusing the black screen + ACPI reboot glitch as "bricked?"

    Edit 2: That stupid InsydeFlash program rebooted without saying it would, hence, I didn't have the chance to disable FlashFire and the last two files I downloaded went missing. It also corrupted my filesystem a bit in other ways that were only more obvious after disabling FlashFire so that scandisk could run... if found a few things and truncated a couple files, copied a few more (to resolve crosslinks, and now IE8 menu bar backgrounds are black (must've corrupted one of the graphic resource files). Anyway, I told RIOT to try again and specified 95KB, but the resulting file was only 88KB. Starting with an unedited, 3310 file downloaded from you guys (SlIC2.1 and extra brightness levels), I used this 88KB file and I still have a black screen at boot. Something is up.

    Edit 3:
    Well, I guess I answered my own question by trying it one more time, this time only adding the 88KB main image and leaving the overlays/logos the same. It would not boot... The fan sounded like it was fluctuating and the power light came on, but that's it. I went through the recovery procedure to get running again but I didn't get to mess with it any further (had to go... Am still gone). Now, the question is, why did it screw up with an 88KB file? It was the exact same file I tried before which showed as a black screen, but it didn't affect the BIOS' ability to work/run. The only thing I did differently was that I left the Acer and Intel logos intact, which shouldn't have made things *worse*. Also, I think we've now shown that the "100KB rule" isn't really the only factor. Could you really have meant 100kb (kiloBITS)? That's TINY for a full-color JPEG.

    Edit 4:
    Got it! FWIW, the "load it in EZH2O again to see if it's valid" trick works for progressive JPEGs too. Irfanview doesn't have the option to disable progressive when chosing "Save for Web," though it does in the regular save dialog. I'm still not sure why it only bricks when you only change the main image (EZH2O doesn't complain either as long as you changed all three).
     
    CZroe, Feb 25, 2010
    #73
  14. sam.hackint0sh

    CZroe

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    Done (for now).
    [​IMG]
    [​IMG]

    The "kitteh" wanted to be in the "pikture" so badly that I had to take a second shot (camera kept focusing on him).

    When I find my photocopy of my MSF card I will be needing a little 'shop help, at which point I will be moving the Acer logo to the top-center and the cleaned up scan of a copy of my card (*whew* that's a mouth-full) will go in its place. Thanks again!
     
    CZroe, Feb 26, 2010
    #74
  15. sam.hackint0sh

    CZroe

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    Hmm... while my original modified BIOS works fine, I have been unable to reproduce my success for a YouTube video. I set wmencoder to capture the screen and got a surprisingly small file size (under 10MB for almost 30 mins). I planned to edit it down to 10-15mins but the moment of truth, which was recorded on my phone and was going to be stitched onto the end, resulted in this:

    [​IMG]

    Note: the whole image is dim, the bulk of it is shown higher than it should be resulting in visible black dots, the whole image is shifted a little to the left with the off-screen left-side portion displayed on the right but raised to an even higher level (it isn't aligned with the rest of the image).

    It does it even if I leave the other two logo/overlay images alone.
    I did the whole thing over again and it just keeps doing this. I checked and it is using websafe colors, 640x480 resolution, non-progressive JPEG, with no chroma/color sub-sampling. What is going on? I just wanted to demonstrate the simplest way to do it elegantly w/o Photoshop or commercial apps. :(

    I can gladly "show my work" so you can tell me where I went wrong (unedited... Why bother if I did it wrong?) One of the main reasons that it is nearly 30 mins is because I couldn't double-click w/ the screen capture going on so I end up flailing around on the control box (fast way to close when your cursor os closer to it than the X) or causing Explorer to want to rename a file rather that open/run it. All that was goin to be edited down and the main steps played at a faster speed.
     
    CZroe, Feb 27, 2010
    #75
  16. sam.hackint0sh

    CZroe

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    Ugh. I don't know WTH is going on w/my system. The last two "tutorial" images I created inject fine but don't render properly at boot, as described in the last post. The ORIGINAL image I created, which worked fine before, now corrupts the BIOS file when I inject it (EZH2O refuses to reopen it), but the original BIOS file that I made with it still works fine and opens in EZH2O fine (isn't corrupted/won't brick anything). To make matters even more confusing, after trying to get my newer images to work, I gave up and restored that same successfully-customized and working BIOS file, rebooted, saw that all was well, and packed my laptop up to take home. When I booted again, I saw this:

    [​IMG]
    ?!

    It went back to normal the next time I booted, but: WEIRD. It seemed to be showing everything at native vertical resolution including the ANSI text from the BIOS, though it was still proportionally stretched horizontally. This meant extra screen area and, as you can see, the image was repeating at the bottom, though it was dim/diffused.
     
    CZroe, Feb 27, 2010
    #76
  17. sam.hackint0sh

    MarcelPengel

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    Hello,

    i have a AAO-D250 (Widescreen) and want to replace my bootlogo.

    I already have the EzH2O-Application (english version).

    My BIOS i want to edit is "AOD250-1.26-SLIC21"

    I hope that you can answer me the following questions:

    A: Where i can replace the Bootlogo?
    B: Which size in pixel and filesize must it be?

    greetz by marcel

    PS: Sorry for my bad English. I'm from Germany.
     
    MarcelPengel, Feb 28, 2010
    #77
  18. sam.hackint0sh

    CZroe

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    I still can't figure this out. The only thing I can see that is consistently different with the bad set of images is that they always encode to a smaller filesize with the same settings, which is understandable because I whited-out the driver's license and the bike is smaller within the white background (lower complexity at 640x480). I even tried letting EZH20 do the conversion from one of my bitmaps and it still showed the same glitchy crap. I'm getting very frustrated and my BIOS is probably being re-written more than the EEPROM/Flash was ever meant to endure!

    It must be 640x480 resolution, but EZH20 will offer to correct that for you. If you create it first, try to keep the filesize under 100KB (less if you are not replacing the Acer logo with a 1KB image).

    To replace the bootlogo, load the BIOS file in the EZH2O and select "Logo..." from the "Components" menu. Browse to your image to set it's path in the first drop-down box and then click "Patch." Save the edited BIOS file using the "File" menu and then load it again (even though it is already loaded). It may prompt you to save changes, which you have already done, so ignore it (this glitch may cause you to save over the original file when you only intended to use "Save As..." for a new file). If it does not give you an error when you reload the edit BIOS file, then go ahead and flash it using InsydeFlash: Copy the BIOS file to the InsydeFlash directory and run the program; it will automatically find it and prompt you; be careful because it will restart without warning when complete.

    If all goes well, you will see your custom bootlogo, though it may be distorted like my examples above (I am working on this; I can't figure out why some images work and others don't). I doubt a D250 has the same issue as my ZG5, but if your system just abruptly powers off after rebooting, remove the power cord and battery, then re-insert and boot again.

    If you want to tidy things up a bit, add a black border of 37 pixels on top and at leasst 30 pixels on the bottom to hide the clashing screen elements (BIOS output text at the bottom; weird black dots at the top). If you havea white or black background, you canplace the image such that the other logos can be replaced with solid white or black images (a 102x49 JPEG/JPG and a 130x98 bitmap/BMP).
     
    CZroe, Feb 28, 2010
    #78
  19. sam.hackint0sh

    shaycando

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    nice this is so easy to do i used the ezh20 put in some pics and used insydeflash to flash it and when i did it i held down the fn and esc key untell the power light was flashing and than thats it i will say this its so easy a caveman can do it
     
    shaycando, Mar 28, 2010
    #79
  20. sam.hackint0sh

    ben.harris

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    Apologies for resurrecting and old post, but I wanted to add a bit of information that anyone creating their own logo might find useful. The offsets for the two extra images are:

    JPEG: Offset: 0, 340 - Dimensions: 102 x 49
    BMP: Offset: 460, 98 - Dimensions: 130 x 98

    Knowing the above offsets, you can create an image which doesn't appear to contain either of the additional logos. These values were worked out through trial-and-error, so I thought it worth posting on here in the hope that it will save someone else the effort!

    Ben.
     
    ben.harris, Mar 17, 2012
    #80
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