How to change the full-screen BIOS splash image for Award BIOS 6.0
You need:
CBROM version 2.15, awfl823b.exe (flash utility for Award BIOSes), awbmtools.zip, VFD, a BIOS image (say, BIOSvA.bin), Nero or some other
program that can create bootable CDs. Or I guess you could just use a real floppy disk(!) and then you won't need VFD or Nero.
Extract logo from original bios:
- Run CBROM215 BIOSvA.bin /D to list all parts of the bios.
- Run CBROM215 BIOSvA.bin /logo extract - should give you a bitmap, let's
call it vpsd.bmp file.
Edit logo
(These tools come from awbmtools.zip)
- Run awbm2tiff vpsd.bmp vpsd.tiff - converts to indexed tiff
- Edit the tiff file, resave it as new.tiff (keep indexed color mode)
- Run tiff2awbm new.tiff new.bmp
Insert logo into new bios:
- copy BIOSvA.bin newbios.bin
- Run CBROM215 newbios.bin /logo new.bmp - should insert the new logo. If more
space is needed, you can try the following:
- CBROM215 newbios.bin /epa release (gets rid of the little green star
logo)
- CBROM215 newbios.bin /pci release (gets rid of the network boot ROM)
Create boot disk for flashing:
- Run vfdwin
- install driver, then start driver
- for drive0, change the drive letter (to P in this example)
- open the boot image file bootimg.bin (extracted from drdos703.iso)
- open up explorer and go to P: - you should see some dos files
- copy awfl823b.exe and newbios.bin into P:
- close the explorer window
- in vfdwin, click save, save as newbootimg.bin
- click close
- stop driver, then uninstall
- run nero. choose "cd-rom (boot)"
- select "image file" and navigate to newbootimg.bin
- make sure it's set to floppy emulation
- click new
- you will get a blank window. no need to add any files, just click burn
flash image:
This assumes you have a Bios Savior, and you want the ORIG position (original BIOS chip) to hold the modified image and the RD1 position
(Bios Savior memory) to hold the original backup BIOS image. This sounds backwards, but the Bios Savior memory is hard to write to, and
it often takes a dozen tries to flash an image to it. Reading from it is no problem. Also I think awfl823b won't write to the Bios
Savior memory because it has the wrong model number. I think you need a different flash utility (uniflash?) to write to it.
- boot to CD from Bios Savior chip
- switch to ORIG (VIA) chip
- run awfl823b, enter in newbios.bin, and flash away