(UEFI) Dell XPS 15z L511z modded BIOS - and HOWTO

[TimeWalker]

@all
Hey, any news in the world of exploiting?
@kasar you got your chips delivered yet?

@jkbuha I have yet to receive the "refund" from pledgie, the money was never marked as being refunded and my bank statement doesn't list the return operation. So it must have gone to your paypal account OO

[jkbuha]

give it a while mate don't worry - it approx takes 7 days from the date of your transfer. either way please let me know so i'll chase it with paypal/pledgie myself if necessary.

re: exploiting i'm still looking at ME firmware patching as it seems the only route for now. i'm also looking to see whether we can use clover for undervolting/overclocking (clover menu seems to support both, and initial booting into osx seems encouraging) but clover is b****y unstable and inconsistent at least as far as it works on my dell. also i cannot boot into uefi for win8 or linux. still it's a great experimental step in the right direction. any luck yourself?

[TimeWalker]

nah, been busy since Friday .. hence my inactivity. posted a couple of things over at IM though. will try to upload the HDA stuff you have requested at some point this week.

[jkbuha]

cheers tw!
@kasar - my paypal is still locked. once it's reenabled i'll be sending my cash your way

[kasar]

@willerson

as far I know the intel graphics are allways on at the l502x, they are directly conected to the integrated screen and minidisplay port,

the only port directly conected to the nvidia card is the hdmi port..

at the integrated display and minidisplay port, when using the nvidia card, rendered frames are sent to the intel graphics so it just show what nvidia graphics render.

thank you

I'm just waiting for the chips now, hopefully there will not be any other damage rather the burned bios chip.

@TimeWalker

nope, still waiting for the chips to arrive D:

however, the sockets arrived today, they arrived before even I ordered them later.

the guys from bios-repair site also were so kind, asking me by email if they arrived fine.

@jkbuha

well, i think we can close the pledgie, no one is donating anymore and hopefully the money will be enough to pay the money the sockets, chips and the other electronics costed.

I had to ask borrowed money the the bank to pay the electronic stuff (my bank account is below 0 right now)

never did that in past, however fix the laptop is a urgent thing.

oh, just checked paypal this morning and they are still keeping/retaining those 20 eur for some reason :o

edit: ah, ok, let me know when your paypal account works again

@all

like I mentionated, the sockets arrived today.

that made me motivation to hurry build another programmer, smaller size and with the socket built in, a must have for this project.

also attached a socket to the laptop motherboard in the place the chip were before to avoid long cable issues or other problems

I had to cut/remove a small plastic square from the case to let it fit, but now it is nice, and it is easly accesible by just removing the cover plate (just 1 s.crew required to remove)

here are the pics, you also can see the old programer compared with the new one







checked things with multimeter and it worked nice (good electrical contact)

I also tested the broken chip with the new programmer and it was detecting it sometimes like with the older one, so I asume it works :3

now all I need is wait for the chips, program them and put them in the motherboard.

all the hard electronical job is already done, just program and install.

this will make future modificacions way easier without desoldering/soldering each time I make changes.

with this I can also program directly the chip by hardware level, being able to edit the chip image and replace the ME version and others (will need help for that ^^)

hope they will arrive soon

how about you guys?

any update?

[TheWiz]

Hey everyone,

Just wanted to comment on the fantastic work everyone is doing. I have made a donation on behalf of the site and myself to help Kasar replace his motherboard to continue the excellent work.

Thanks guys,
TheWiz

[kasar]

@marstone

I just noticed the paypal donation

thank you mate


@Thewiz

thank you so much for the generous donation, I will continue for sure trying to discover the secrets of our hardware


I saw

[Brabbelbla]

@willerson
I think this is very interesting. My hypothesis was that when selecting PEG as primary graphics adapter, there would not be any output to the internal display or miniDP at all, as I thought those are physically connected to the IGP. So I never even thought about trying

But now it appears there IS graphic output to the internal display with PEG as primary. Did you notice anything appearing different before entering the Windows GUI (logon screen and onward)? It'd be interesting to know how Windows thinks the graphics are configured, then. Does it still recognize the IGP being there? Would a driver reinstall 'fix' the issue? Perhaps not installing the Intel driver anymore?

[willerson]

Never Tryed to Reinstall the Drivers, but when i Start windows, it shows me the collors of loading windows normally, but when appear login screen, it shows ll fuzzy and not in correct resolution.

i Will try with linux to see if it occurs in it too.

--
EDIT:

tested on linux, the both of two cards stay on... like Kasar said, i thinks this notebook doesnt have the Option to Turn Off the Intel IGD crap VGA...

[]'s

[Crawler45]

Hello everyone,

First I'd like to say that what you guys are doing is pretty amazing

I have the Dell XPS 15Z (L511z) and I decided to flash the BIOS with your update.

However, once the process was successfully done, I can't seem to boot at all. I only keep hearing 6 (equivalent length) beeps and nothing happens (Screen black, keyboard doesn't work, can hear the CPU fan running but eventually stops).

Here's what I have tried so far to fix it:

1. Downloaded the file that jkbuha has posted for the fix. Followed the instructions but still hear the beeps and nothing happens.

2. Removed the CMOS battery for 20 minutes and plugged it back in. No luck.

3. Reseated the RAM, and laptop battery. No luck.

Do you think that my laptop is now completely useless? Or is there a possible (cost effective) solution to fix this?

Thanks in advance guys