86Box BIOS Tools

A toolkit for extracting and analyzing x86 BIOS ROM images (mostly) within the context of the 86Box project.

System requirements

• Linux. Unfortunately, we rely on tools which contain non-portable code and generate filenames that are invalid for Windows, as well as GNU-specific extensions to shell commands.
• Python 3.5 or newer.
• Standard gcc toolchain for building the essential bios_extract tool.
• 7-Zip command line utility installed as 7z.

Installation

1. Clone this repository.
2. Build the bios_extract tool:

cd bios_extract
make
cd ..

3. Download the UEFIExtract tool from its GitHub repository and place its executable on the repository's root directory. Prebuilt versions are only available for x86_64, but this tool is optional, and only required for UEFI extraction.
4. Optionally install a dependency required for BIOS logo extraction:

pip install -r requirements.txt

Usage

1. Create a destination directory, which will be called roms here.
2. Create a 1 directory within roms.
3. Place BIOS ROM images, archives, disk images, flasher executables and what have you in the 1 directory. Subdirectories will also be checked.
4. Run the extractor, pointing it to the directory created in step 1:

python3 -m biostools -x roms

5. The extracted file structure will be located in roms/0. Individual files are extracted to directories named after the original file's name followed by :.
6. Run the analyzer, pointing it to the 0 directory and redirecting its output to a bioslist.csv file:

python3 -m biostools -a roms/0 | tee bioslist.csv

7. Import the resulting bioslist.csv file to Excel, or do whatever else you want to do with it. Other output formats can be selected through arguments to -a; run python3 -m biostools to see a full list of supported arguments.

Extraction notes

• Many common file types known not to be useful, such as images, PDFs, Office documents and hardware information tool reports, are automatically discarded.
• Interleaved ROMs are merged through a heuristic filename and string detection, which may lead to incorrect merging if the chunks to different interleaved ROMs are present in the same directory.
• The FAT filesystem extractor relies on assumptions which may not hold true for all disk images.
• PCX (AMI) and EPA (Award) images are automatically converted to PNG if the aforementioned optional dependency is installed.
• Some Intel motherboard BIOSes (particularly from the AMIBIOS 6 era) will not be extracted properly due to a different address line inversion mechanism. This is a known issue with the Intel update format concatenator which may eventually be solved.
• Extraction of the following BIOS distribution formats is not implemented due to the use of unknown compression methods:
  • Evergreen ETI (an ugly hack exists)
  • IBM Sydex floppy self-extractor (it looks like CopyQM RLE but isn't)

Analysis notes

AMI

• Pre-Color (1990 and older) BIOSes have a dynamically-generated string that is not easily extractable; the analyzer will attempt to reconstruct it around the limited data contained in the ROM in a best-effort basis.
• The string on UEFI is a hidden string located within the AMIBIOS 8-based Compatibility Support Module (CSM). A missing string may indicate a lack of CSM.

Award

• The core version can be followed by (Phoenix) on BIOSes which identify as Phoenix AwardBIOS, or (Workstation) on ones which identify as Award WorkstationBIOS.
• OEM modifications which interfere with detection: Sukjung (string)

IBM

• The FRU codes contained in PC or PS/2 ROMs are interpreted as the string.

Phoenix

• Identification is not perfect, as the location of identification data varies from version to version, and a lot of OEMs mess with it.
• Phoenix has no concept of a string. Any date or time found in the BIOS is interpreted as the string.

Add-on reference

Depending on the contents of each BIOS, the following tags may be displayed on the analyzer output's "Add-ons" column:

• ACPI: Appears to contain an ACPI table. Does not necessarily indicate ACPI actually works.
• Adaptec: Adaptec ISA or PCI SCSI option ROM.
• NCR3/4: NCR PCI SCSI option ROM with SDMS version 3 or 4 (respectively).
• PXE: PXE-compliant network boot ROM, usually associated with on-board Ethernet.
• RPL: Novell NetWare RPL-compliant network boot ROM, usually associated with on-board Ethernet.
• SLI: NVIDIA SLI license for non-nForce motherboards.
• UEFI: The BIOS core is UEFI-compliant. Does not necessarily indicate UEFI support is available.
• VGA: Video BIOS, usually associated with on-board video.

BIOS-specific add-ons

• AMIBIOS (Color through 7) setup types: Color, EasySetup, HiFlex, NewSetup, SimpleSetup, WinBIOS.
• Award: PhoenixNet indicates the presence of PhoenixNet features, even if those were disabled by the OEM. UEFI indicates Gigabyte Hybrid EFI.