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

[jkbuha]

Besides a merry xmas to you all, I just wanted to say happy one year's anniversary to the start of this thread! Exactly one year ago to the date (and also after way too much food) I wrote the first post to this thread in the hope of sharing (and gaining) some knowledge on unlocking our Dell UEFI bioses. Am happy to say we have accomplished a lot as a team in the last 12 months! Here's to another year of discovery, success but importantly fun doing it

Thanks y'all!

[TimeWalker]

Yeah, New year's eve is right around the corner.. best wishes for the following year. Fullfil all your new year resolution and don't ditch it all in mid January lol
Even thoughI kind of came towards the end of the party I believe like first 3 quarters of the year were not that exciting as the last one.

p.s. on a side note I'm happy Tapatalk just rolled out a full-fledged HD version optimized for tablets so I won't be cramped with my 3.2" smartphone anymore (if you can even call it so ) a nice Christmas gift to go along with a tablet-optimized version of Flipboard released recently. Maybe I will be more productive on the go in terms of forum activity.

[jkbuha]

yes agreed TW - the last 3 months have been definitely the most exciting parts of the year

I've got some interesting news for you btw - remember when I said that sleep worked fine on my 15z? Well I've finally managed to patch my AppleHDA to work with the 15z's ALC269, and as soon as I deploy it instead of the VoodooHDA - bam! sleep breaks. I'm still trying to figure out why (including trying out your DSDT patch) but thought you'd be interested to know this latest discovery.

[TimeWalker]

You have probably used a badly patched version of IOAudioFamily as it's a known issue.. it implements some obstruction layer overrides to monitor the status of an external amplifier (EAPD). If the patch is implemented poorly in the sources then this happens when using patched AppleHDA. The sleep issues we were getting are not related to HDA in any way.

[jkbuha]

Yes you're right TW - I've replaced the IOAudioFamily kext and sleep has returned. So it was a red herring - sorry about that.

On a related note I've checked my DSDT memory assignments as outlined in your Sleep Howto and my Bios A12 DSDT OperationRegion maps are the same as your Bios A07. So I'm not sure if this will eventually fix sleep or not just by using DSDT edits. Just my two cents

[TimeWalker]

Yeah it did fix already, actually
I've reverted to original PlatformSmm module and did just the DSDT edits which I've proposed earlier and all is fine with sleep/wake cycle on A13 BIOS.

[kasar]

srry for the late answer, didnt had access to internet or laptop too much in those days and will still connect very few till next year ^^

yeah, this topic has been exciting
me and my laptop got really involved in this ^^
it has been a nice adventure, I like you guys

I hope our adventures will continue after xmas.

hope you all a happy xmas (:

[TimeWalker]

Bloody [censored] .. what a disappointment. The brightness bug surfaced again, this time with 2130 vbios. /cvar doesn't help.. It happened after booting osx with uefi clover, then booting legacy win8 and then osx with xpc. Upon booting with clover next time brightness controls borked on me :| I guess I need to reset cmos properly, not partially, but this is not happening until I upgrade to an ssd in mid January ...

Happy new years everyone.

Sent from my LG-P500 using Tapatalk 2

[jkbuha]

Sorry to hear your woes TW - is this because of clover's uefi booting though? if not, it may be the case why Dell has kept the laptops on v2104 vbios.

If it's any consolation I'm also going though some UEFI issues with clover. Can boot successfully into OSX with a UEFI USB, but Legacy Mode (PBR or LegacyBios) simply freezes when selecting Win8/Linux. Shame because I think the clover project has a lot of potential.

Happy NY (and NYE) everyone

[TimeWalker]

I think it's because of UEFI booting in general, even though Arch Linux and Ubuntu (Live CDs with Legacy Boot disabled in BIOS) can sometimes adequately react to certain key combinations that I have problems in OSX otherwise. So it may as well be a problem related to AptioFix and it somehow messing the actual NVRAM on the unit. How can you explain it accidentally breaking for no reason when only thing I had done is update the bootloader. I have tried using the stock factory VBIOS that Dell provides for our machines and it didn't help either.. I believe it's CMOS-related.. will see if I can install a switch of some sort, like @kasar did on his machine.

The legacy booting things is hit and miss really, especially on our crappy UEFI implementation.. I bet you BIOS emulation is not getting enabled hence nothing happens after you chose the volume to boot. In theory the EmuVar driver should hand the control to UEFI, and it gets looped somewhere. Legacy boot was never polished nor was it properly implemented. But actually I don't care about it that much, I will be trying to install Windows 8 Pro in UEFI mode when I get the SSD, to see if all the hangs and freezes related to QuickSet and Wi-Fi toggle people with L702x are getting are present on my Vostro. If it's fine then presto - I'm sticking with UEFI Windows and OSX multiboot, as soon sa I get an Optical bay that is.. postal services will still be crowded till mid February.

Also I felt like I almost lost my machine today lol .. that would have been bad considering I'm away for this holiday season. For some reason it occurred to me to flash the bios using the /v verify flag.. well, it didn't go very well to be absolutely honest with you. It flashed the BIOS region, then the EC.. and started checking, then buzzes like 3 times through the speaker saying verification has failed turned the screen off and remained sitting with fan going at full speed and kyeboard illuminated for 10 solid minutes, then it started beeping with high-pitched sounds to accompany the rest. I was unable to shut it by holding the power button, unplugging the power lead didn't help either.. so I had to pull the battery out (so never attempt doing the /v thing on your 15z lol or you will have to wait long enough until it dies on you) and after replugging it back in and powering on the unit it sure had a corrupted bios. Luckily, I had @kasar's magic disk in my laptop bag ...