Motherboard: ASUS B250 Mining Expert (https://www.asus.com/us/Motherboards/B250-MINING-EXPERT/)
UEFI Firmware: http://dlcdnet.asus.com/pub/ASUS/mb/LGA1…T-ASUS-0403.zip
I have been learning about the tools for modifying the motherboard firmware. I have looked at UEFITool, AMIBCP, MMTool, and ME Analyzer. Using UEFITool, I found the splash screen graphic and learned how to replace it, but what I really am trying to find is a hardware check that happens prior to showing the splash screen.
On this motherboard there is one PCI-E x16 slot and eighteen PCI-E x1 slots for the purpose of operating with 19 graphics cards. You can use any graphics cards when you have 13 or fewer cards, but for more than 13 cards, ASUS requires the last six cards to be of a specific type (P106 mining cards). So, for example, I have a system with 13 GTX 1060s and 6 P106s, and it works just fine. This restriction is arbitrarily placed in the firmware and I would like to bypass it.
Here is what I have tested:
System with 13 GTX 1060s: boots fine, no problem.
System with 14 GTX 1060s: screen stays black and the splash screen never appears.
System with 13 GTX 1060s and up to 6 P106s: boots fine, no problem.
If I power on the system with 13 GTX 1060s attached and wait a couple seconds before plugging in the 14th GTX 1060, then the system boots fine and I have access to all 14 cards. Based on this, I assume that there is a hardware check done prior to the splash screen that counts up the graphics cards and looks to see if there are P106s for the cards #14-19.
I was hoping to to find the splash screen referenced in the firmware and backtrace the firmware from there to find where this hardware check is executed. Then I could modify the firmware to ignore the results of the check and boot anyway.
I am not experienced in this, and if there is anyone that could point me in the right direction it would be very helpful.
Right now I am looking through the PCI IRQ routing table in AMIBCP to see if there is an hardware reference to the PCI slots that I could search for in other parts of the firmware.
Any ideas?
Hi here.
I’m to have the same MB.
@IndigoDEZ
I think need just cutting hardware lock, it is similar to the branded laptop like HP.
just need to find PID/VID from ALL possible Mining CARDs and looking it in whole extracted modules.
P.S. Byte can be swapped with lo hi (like in asm, lower byte then higher)
just the find all PID/VID.
And not forget to push me back.