Recovering from A215-S5849 BIOS Flash Corruption
Research Links
- How to Recover a BIOS after a failed update ( Spanish )
- Toshiba Satellite A215-S7422 bios crisis recovery
- Phoenix BIOS Crisis Recovery Disk
- Toshiba: SATELLITE A215-S5849 SUPPORT – drivers and bios download
- Dv2910us Bios Problem
- Google: Phoenix crisis build disk
- Dissassembly of Toshiba laptops
- PCI bus info and code
- AMI BIOS reverse engineering – in depth
- Low Cost Embedded x86 Teaching Tool – interesting project to make embedded tools based on pc platform
Summary of Process
First I went and bought a usb-floppy, recommend to look at ebay and wait and have saved the $30+.
Then download the attachment above and extract that to anywhere you want.
* Plug in the usb-floppy into a working computer.
* Open the CRISDISK folder and run the program wincris.
* Check Create MiniDos Crisis Disk
– Then click Start, then OK
* A floppy format program will pop up
– Leave the Volume Label blank
– File System (Fat), and
– Default Allocation Size
– And make sure that Quick format and Create a MS-DOS startup disk are NOT checked.
* Click Start, then OK
– wait for it to finish then select OK then Close and wait again for the program to finish.
* While you wait go to
http://welcome.hp.com/country/us/en/support.html
and search up your laptop in my case (dv2910us)
download the bios update and extract the program. (Winrar can do this) look for the WPH file and rename it BIOS.WPH copy that to the floppy and overwrite the file already on there.
* Safely remove the floppy.
Now take out the battery of your laptop and unplug the power.
Plug in the usb-floppy
Press Win+B
And while doing so plug in the ac adapter
power on the laptop and you should hear 3 beeps.
Your floppy drive can be heard working
Then you will hear alot more beeps they will not be consistent so wait about 10 minutes.
If the computer does not auto shutdown by then manually do so.
Power back on the laptop with the usb-floppy unplugged and there you go.
A working laptop.
BadBios Links and Notes
There is a computer virus being reported that is of a sophistication level unseen on the normal public nets until now. It is called badBios by the discoverer Dragos Ruiu.
Research Links
Installing Cadence Virtuoso on Ubuntu
Installing Cadence Virtuoso on Ubuntu
Research Links
Design Kit Information
- Setup IBM 180nM design kit
- Instructions: SetUp Design Kit
- Google: cadence virtuoso how to install design kit
- IBM 180nM 7RF Process Overview
Ancillary Links
Notes
- Cadence is not a monolithic tool, but rather a set of design entry, simulation, extraction, layout, and verification tools that operate on a common database format (CDB) library. Cadence maintained its own propietary format for this database through version IC5.1.4 of the tools. Newer versions of the design entry tools (IC6.x) utilize an open database format called Open Access.
- https://www.mosis.com/what-is-mosis What is MOSIS?
Unbreakable Cipher Code using One Time Truly Random Pad and Exclusive Or
Research Links
Using a simple XOR function you can make a cipher which when used with a fixed key is easy to break. However if you use it with a one time pad that is truly random it is theoretically unbreakable. If this methodology was used with say a simple microcontroller that had an extremely simple set of code on it that was open source then it might be very difficult to break indeed. Anything as complex as Windows and Linux have to be assumed to be comprimised.
Desktop Sharing
I have the goal of being able to put on internet browsing shows. The best way to do this with a mass audience would be to send only navigation tokens to the audience. The one difficulty I see is syncing videos. If there is any commentary during the video there must be syncing of some sort. Perhaps it would be easier to let the video roll and delay the commentary to sync to the video time counter.
Research Links
FIX: I find Googles Omnibox search page annoying because it appears to coerce only 10 result searches
Research Links
- The fix
- In the address bar type: chrome://flags/
- then hit return
Change its setting from Default = disabled
Google is shaving nickels it appears. They save on electricity when they return only 10 results versus 100 results. However I do esoteric searches that require big result sets.