Integration of the AHCI Security Extension(ahci_sbe) into Award BIOS. [Help/advice needed]

Hello.
First of all I would like to thank every person who shared his or her experience here, it really helped me a lot. But still my knowledge are insufficient that is why I would like to ask some assistance or advice. Here is what I am trying to do, I’ve got an Award BIOS motherboard(Gigabyte H67A-UD3H-B3) and a self-encrypting SSD(Intel 520), but sadly my motherboard does not support ata password feature, so I am trying to integrate an appropriate BIOS extension to enable this functionality. The problem is that I am stuck on integration part or it is better to say, that I don’t understand how to do it properly in this case. The only guides I’ve encountered regarding this topic are for AMI BIOS, e.g. this and at some point it is always written there that I have to replace something(based on device and vendor id) with BIOS security extention(ahci_sbe.rom) mentioned above. A quote from the guide:


I have already created ahci_sbe.rom with correct device id(8168) and vendor id(10EC). BIOS image(link to BIOS image) components detected by CBROM_198 are below:

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              ********     h7aud3h3 BIOS component ********
 
No. Item-Name Original-Size Compressed-Size Original-File-Name
================================================================================
0. System BIOS 20000h(128.00K) 13773h(77.86K) test.BIN
1. XGROUP CODE 0DB50h(54.83K) 095A4h(37.41K) awardext.rom
2. ACPI table 049FBh(18.50K) 01B7Dh(6.87K) ACPITBL.BIN
3. GROUP ROM[18] 04F00h(19.75K) 02CE2h(11.22K) ggroup.bin
4. GROUP ROM[20] 08AC0h(34.69K) 0482Eh(18.04K) ffgroup.bin
5. TSEG0 06350h(24.83K) 03B60h(14.84K) y2group.bin
6. YGROUP ROM 0D9E0h(54.47K) 07263h(28.60K) awardeyt.rom
7. GROUP ROM[22] 0F630h(61.55K) 02B93h(10.89K) tgroup.bin
8. GROUP ROM[23] 0F630h(61.55K) 04A24h(18.54K) t1group.bin
9. GROUP ROM[24] 0F630h(61.55K) 0453Fh(17.31K) t2group.bin
10. GROUP ROM[25] 0F630h(61.55K) 01A77h(6.62K) t3group.bin
11. GROUP ROM[26] 0F630h(61.55K) 0015Ch(0.34K) t4group.bin
12. GROUP ROM[ 0] 074D0h(29.20K) 02940h(10.31K) _EN_CODE.BIN
13. VGA ROM[1] 10000h(64.00K) 09251h(36.58K) snd_2117.dat
14. PCI ROM[A] 1DC00h(119.00K) 10E0Ch(67.51K) raidrst5.bin
15. PCI ROM[B] 04000h(16.00K) 02B45h(10.82K) cptahci.bin
16. PCI ROM[C] 10000h(64.00K) 097BDh(37.93K) rtegrom.lom
17. MINIT 1E3A0h(120.91K) 1E3D2h(120.96K) smminit.bin
18. OEM0 CODE 034F6h(13.24K) 0265Bh(9.59K) SBF.BIN
19. OEM2 CODE 40000h(256.00K) 07949h(30.32K) mefwrhdr.bin
20. LOGO BitMap 4B30Ch(300.76K) 1A98Dh(106.39K) ud3dbios.bmp
21. GV3 03900h(14.25K) 02286h(8.63K) PPMINIT.ROM
22. OEM3 CODE 015A0h(5.41K) 00C46h(3.07K) MATSINIT.ROM
23. OEM7 CODE 73000h(460.00K) 4891Ah(290.28K) EXTBIOS.BIN
(SP) NCPUCODE 1BC01h(111.00K) 1BC01h(111.00K) NCPUCODE.BIN
 
Total compress code space = 1E4000h(1936.00K)
Total compressed code size = 110FD9h(1091.96K)
Remain compress code space = D3047h(844.07K)
 
******** h7aud3h3 Bootblock component ********
 
No. Item-Name Original-Size Compressed-Size Original-File-Name
================================================================================
1. MEM INIT IN BB 00B60h(2.84K) 00B91h(2.89K) procinit.bin
 
** Micro Code Information **
Update ID CPUID | Update ID CPUID | Update ID CPUID | Update ID CPUID
 
------------------+--------------------+--------------------+-------------------
SLOT1 07 000206A1| SLOT1 26 000206A2 | SLOT1 08 000206A3 | SLOT1 07 000206A5
 
SLOT1 28 000206A6| SLOT1 25 000206A7 | SLOT1 1B 000206A7 | SLOT1 08 000306A2
 
SLOT1 07 000306A4| SLOT1 07 000306A5 | SLOT1 02 000306A6 | SLOT1 08 000306A8
 
SLOT1 0C 000306A9|
 


What should I do next? Should I just use command "CBROM.EXE h7aud3h3 /PCI ahci_sbe.rom" to insert this extention into BIOS image? Or should I replace rtegrom.lom with renamed ahci_sbe.rom? As far as I understand, rtegrom.lom is Realtek Ethernet ROM, but my intuition tells me that it is not a good idea to replace it. Maybe there are some additional steps that are needed?

I would really appreciate if you could provide any kind of help.

P.S. By the way there is a guide for outdated ATA Security eXtension that mentions integration of it into Award BIOS as "ISA Extension BIOS" module. I don't think that it is useful in my case but I think it is better to mentioned it here, maybe it will be of some help.

Anyone?

Hi you probably won’t read this, but for the sake of others who use Google/search function I will reply. This is a good module to add ATA security to your motherboard with AHCI for daily use.

You have to replace the PXE rom (used to boot from LAN), in your case this is indeed the line PCI ROM[C] 10000h(64.00K) 097BDh(37.93K) rtegrom.lom. There is no issue in replacing this module, since you will probably not use this at all. It does not effect the network card functionality.

I do not know how you got your vendor and device ID, it seems to be OK since you do have a realtek rom, but it could also be the sample ID used by Tobias who made the module. (just in case use the command “sudo lspci -nn” in Linux to double check.

Now you have to rename ahci_sbe.rom to rtegrom.lom. The correct command is then “CBROM.EXE h7aud3h3 /PCI rtegrom.lom”. For the rest just follow the instructions on [Guide] Award/Phoenix BIOS Modding Part D.

Regarding the ATA security extension. This will work just fine, the only reason why it is dated is because it only support IDE mode, which sucks a bit for multi disk access, sequential read/write should be close to the same. You can configure it as a PCI module and not ISA using bromcfg.exe and it will work the same.

The ATA security extension BIOS has full fledged functionality, and is great to set up the drives with, doing recovery with the master password and setting the security level.

@Elurin :
Welcome to the Win-RAID Forum and thanks for your contribution, which may help other users.

@Sh1ro :
Above is the reply from our new Forum member Elurin to your request dated October 2016.
I am sorry for the late answer, but better late than never.

Regards
Dieter (alias Fernando)

I want to try the AHCI ATA Security Extension but i cant compile it. I have no Linux and its hard to find an HowTo or something like this. If sameone read this and is willing to help me. Its only 20kb of data. I modified both makefile.release files with my Vendor and Device ID. If some one could do me this Favor i would realy grateful. :slight_smile:

AHCI.zip (24.1 KB)