flashing BIOS adventures

[BenB]

thought i'd share since it was such a pain in the ass for me to work
through..

i was interested in using luigi or any other reputable alternative
BIOS, allowing me to boot to USB and install other OSs like Windows or
OSX. after discovering that the popularized luigi alternate BIOS is
now defunct, i looked for other options.

i found an alternative on cr48.wikispaces.com (now also defunct) and
was able to disassemble my cr48 and flash the new alternate BIOS.
after doing so my cr48 was still bootable and ran the already
installed chrome OS without any problems, however all of my attempts
at creating a bootable USB installer for other OSs (WInXP and Vista,
Ubuntu) were unsuccessful.

bummer, right!?

after some time i realized i was no longer able to access developer
mode (while using the alternate BIOS) even with the developer switch
enabled, and could no longer update to newer chrome OS versions
(apparently 0.13 is now available).

i suspected the alternate BIOS and its effects were the cause of my
apparent disconnect with the mothership, so i looked around for
methods to restore back to the stock BIOS (which I had wisely backed
up before overwriting). unfortunately, without developer mode I didn't
have access to the needed commands to reflash my BIOS. on top of that
i had so far been unable to boot into any other OS.

jolicloud saved me here, and i was able to boot from USB (without
actually installing jolicloud) and use a terminal to compile and
install the latest flashrom, and then read and rewrite my BIOS.

i built jolicloud onto the usb stick using their handy usb creator
app, after downloading jolicloud using the torrent from their website.

after building the usb stick with jolicloud i just inserted the USB
stick (SD card actually), booted to the card on my cr48 (which was
previously a failure for all other OSs), and then login to jolicloud.

i downloaded my backup of the BIOS/firmware, and used flashrom from
within jolicloud to reflash/rewrite the BIOS back to the original
BIOS. what a relief!

if anyone needs help doing something similar i should be able to
answer some questions.

[Jish]

You could also have done this using an Ubuntu live USB (from which you could have installed Ubuntu too). If you want to put other OSes on then you should try unetbootin for burning images to USB. There are also a couple of good windows specific ones and linux ones available after a quick Google.

[BenB]

thanks for the extra info. I was burning the images on OSX so some of
the easier windows based USB tools weren't available to me (maybe not
easier but more familiar).

most of the instructions I read (including ubuntu's site) recommended
using dd to write the images to USB, but that never seemed to work
properly for me, as the resulting content wasn't bootable.

for me jolicloud just happened to be the first one that worked (seemed
to be related to the fact that jolicloud has its own usb creator tool
that didn't use dd).

[Jish]

Sounds fun. Do you think it would be helpful to others if I were to make a comprehensive walkthrough guide on how to do it? With screenshots and photographs and such. 

[Dharmesh Vyas]

Yes.

On Sun, Jun 5, 2011 at 8:29 AM, Jish <jcre...@gmail.com> wrote:

Sounds fun. Do you think it would be helpful to others if I were to make a comprehensive walkthrough guide on how to do it? With screenshots and photographs and such. 

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[SuttyJane]

Yes please? Us that are just using the Beta are having these issues 2. 

[Jish]

A guide on how to install another OS on the Cr-48 including how to make a USB installer for both Windows and Linux distros.

[BenB]

That's kind of beyond the scope of the discussion, actually. The goal
was to provide a way back from alternate BIOS to a backed-up BIOS.
From what I can tell the alternate BIOS versions have disappeared to
some extent, and I can't explain why.

Here were my steps to flash an alternate BIOS:

1. disassemble cr48 casing to disable BIOS protection
2. flash BIOS to alternate BIOS using flashrom (backup first, save off
the backup, then flash the new BIOS)
3. configure new BIOS (F2 at bootup) to boot to USB or SD card

these steps I used were on cr48.wikispaces.com, which is now gone.
this looks the same, though: http://www.thechromesource.com/flashing-your-cr-48-bios/
but do this at your own risk, because i did NOT use the alternate BIOS
they provided there.

at this point you just have to provide the cr48 with a bootable USB/SD
card, and it should boot to and allow you to install any alternate OS
of your choice. this is where i got hung up - i gave a few different
versions of windows a try using "dd" on OSX to create the bootable USB
stick, and was unable to produce a bootable USB stick. instead the
cr48 would just boot to ChromeOS and skip the USB stick (even though
BIOS was configured to try the USB stick first).

i decided it was time to restore my BIOS and get everything back to
"normal". I was able to boot into jolicloud after using their handy
USB creator tool for OSX. this bootable version of jolicloud worked
for me on the cr48, and after booting into jolicloud from the USB
stick i was able to install/compile the latest version of flashrom and
then rewrite my BIOS back to my backed-up version of the BIOS (the
original Google BIOS). all without actually installing jolicloud.

as a result, once i had restored the BIOS i was still able to boot
into ChromeOS. I choose to restore from USB anyway though (http://
www.google.com/support/chromeos/bin/answer.py?answer=1046510).

[SuttyJane]

Thanks 4 the info! Ninja contact made and am going to try all of these steps. BTW- there's a known issue with the drive & some early models like mine (got in Dec. 2010) have had to be returned & re-issued. Hoping for best case, worse I may have to plead for another.

[Will Lentz]

when I flashed i used these setup instructions to prepare the cr-48  (http://dep.posterous.com/how-to-install-jolicloud-on-a-cr-48)  This guide to flash it (http://www.chromeoslounge.com/cr-48-chrome-notebook/1707-how-manually-flash-your-cr-48-insyde-bios.html) and now would probably use the newest ubuntu so this guide to install 11.04 (http://chromeos-cr48.blogspot.com/2011/04/ubuntu-1104-for-cr-48-is-ready.html) and to flash back without backup I would use the applicable firmware (for me it would be mario fish) and follow the instructions again using a ubuntu (or ubuntu like) usb live disk  

On Wed, Jun 8, 2011 at 12:29 AM, SuttyJane <spad...@gmail.com> wrote:

Thanks 4 the info! Ninja contact made and am going to try all of these steps. BTW- there's a known issue with the drive & some early models like mine (got in Dec. 2010) have had to be returned & re-issued. Hoping for best case, worse I may have to plead for another.

--

[Jish]

Sorry - I forgot the put the link to it. Here it is: http://jrcreek.wordpress.com/2011/06/07/how-to-install-another-os-on-your-cr-48/

It covers both flashing the BIOS and making a USB installer for Windows XP through to 7 and also for all Linux Distros.

[John McDonnell]

I wouldn't recommend using this script as it doesn't create a backup of your original BIOS. You'll need this backup if you ever want to set your Cr-48 back to its original state without resorting to a generic "stock" BIOS.

The original guide BenB is referring to is available here:

http://cr-48.wikispaces.com/Flash+BIOS  (sorry about the temporary outage and URL change for the wiki - it's a long story)

This will allow you to create a proper backup and flash the Insyde BIOS. All of the necessary files are included.

The guide also includes instructions to restore your original Cr-48 BIOS.

Hope this helps.

[Aaron Bloom]

thanks for the post Ben.  As an aside, my understanding is that you should NOT install XP on an SSD such as the one in the CR-48.  

[BenB]

Because of issues with available XP drivers for SSDs?

[Kristian]

If you still have your stock BIOS firmware, could you upload it for me? I am reverting back to ChromeOS to test it again and I seem to have misplaced my firmware backup. 

Thanks!

[John]

You can download the "stock" BIOS for the Cr-48 (Fish or Pony) here:

http://cr-48.wikispaces.com/Flash+BIOS