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[Suggestion] Intel BIO -> FD converter

Open NikolajSchlej opened this issue 2 years ago • 2 comments

Looks like Intel is transitioning support for NUC product lineup to Asus, which means they will stop "innovate" at their dreaded BIO file format soon. I doubt Asus will switch to the usual AMI PFAT Capsules, and I also doubt Asus will change anything substantial about the format, so now is a prime moment to add support for them, i.e. be able to reconstruct an SPI-writer-friendly FD image from an input BIO image without using a hex editor and error-prone manual process.

NikolajSchlej avatar Dec 25 '23 21:12 NikolajSchlej

My guess is that ASUS will use PFAT for their own/new models (as PFAT is used at Intel laptops a lot) but "maintain" BIO for the older ones. At least the ones which still used BIO because Intel also has a "Capsule" (CAP) format.

I'm not sure if re-constructing a full SPI image is even possible with BIO images because they may contain parts of what needs to be updated each time and not the entire image. Something similar applies to PFAT actually (ref https://github.com/platomav/BIOSUtilities?tab=readme-ov-file#description).

Anyway, the main difficulty with writing BIOSUtility tooling is all the RE which is required first. Due to lack of time from my part, if that Intel BIO format RE already exists somewhere in an actionable form, I suppose we could add an Intel BIO utility in the future.

platomav avatar Dec 31 '23 20:12 platomav

I'll see if I can help with RE a bit later.

NikolajSchlej avatar Jan 01 '24 22:01 NikolajSchlej