Comment on Workaround helps improve gaming performance on outdated Intel CPUs — Resizable Bar UEFI mod works with CPUs as old as Sandy Bridge

• 7heo@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  You might be able to drop the manufacturer’s keys somehow[^1] but I would not recommend.

  If you really want to do this, I would recommend:

  1. Unsoldering the eeprom
  2. Soldering a slot in socket instead
  3. Getting a new blank chip
  4. Getting an eeprom programmer
  5. Dumping the eeprom to a bin file
  6. Flashing that bin file onto the new eeprom
  7. Testing that the motherboard POSTs
  8. Searching for cryptographic signatures (possibly compressed, possibly obfuscated - rolling XOR, reversed, etc) in the bin file
  9. Hacking around that bin file trying to blank the keys, or better yet, replace them with yours.
  10. Go to step 7, repeat.

  Of course, you could always flash the modified bin onto the new eeprom directly at step 6, but what’s the fun in that? 😅

  Also, if you really do this(!), please don’t forget to document. 🙏

  [^1]: I doubt they went as far as “fusing” them in the factory, it would be perceived as “overkill” for a general public product - which I assume it is - and would risk running the risk of bricking upgradibility of the board, should the manufacturer lose the keys. Plus, it doesn’t help anything (quite the contrary) if the keys are somehow leaked by the manufacturer.

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  • quaff@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Welp. My skills end at #1. So I guess I’m SOL 😂 Thanks for this though! I like knowing that it’s possible, even if it’s outside of my current ability :)

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    • 7heo@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Well, technically, if you can do #1, you can probably do #2… 😋

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      • quaff@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        For sure haha I meant I don’t have soldering skills. I know there’s a hardware BIOS programmer device I could get, but I feel like at that point, I may as well get a new motherboard 👀

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