Probs creating a BFM bios

[matt]

Hi I'm not sure what I did wrong so I'm just gonna post my method and maybe someone can help.

I was attempting to create a BFM Pixel8 VGA bios using Xbtool (1.0.1b4). First I set up the debug ini so that I could unpack the BFM bioses. This worked fine, and I unpacked the x2_4977 BFM. I renamed remainder.img and 2bl.img to bfm_remainder.img and bfm_2bl.img, and put them in the xbtool BFM folder along with my debug ini renamed to bfm.ini. Then I unpacked the pixel8 bios (strangely it uses a regular 1.0 RC4 key even though it is a debug bios). I deleted the 2bl and remainder files from the pixel8 folder. I went to pack in xbtool, with the debug.ini selected and "Make bootable from media" checked. I selected the xboxkrnl.img in the pixel8 folder, and it packed it without error. Then I unpacked it to check if it worked, and it unpacked with the debug ini file rather than the 1.0 ini file like it should. I renamed to xboxrom.bin, stuck it into the xbox, booted pheonixloader 1.2, and I get a blank screen with the LED flashing orange and green. (I get the blank screen on the computer monitor I hooked up too). And I can still boot other BFM bioses like evoxD6 and x2_4977 so the problem is not with my xbox setup.

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks in advance.

[stealth]

try 2 things.

first, try not using the "make bios bootable from media" in xbtool.

Just take the 2bl.img and remainder.img from any bfm bios, and replace the unpacked vga bios ones with them.

Then simply repack normally using the debug ini in xbtool (not using the make bios bootable from media option).

If that doesn't work, try not replacing the remainder.img. Just replace the 2bl.

Hope this helps

[nghtshd]

What happens when you select the BFM checkbox is, xbtool copies the 2bl and remainder images from the BFM folder to your kernel source folder (backing up the old files first) and then uses the bfm.ini file to pack everything, so it is in effect doing exactly as stealth has suggested you do it "by hand" so to speak. But if there is a bug something then stealth's method could work when xbtool's bfm packing doesn't, so it worth a try.

As for usining any bfm remainder.img, your compressed kernel is going to need to fit into it. I believe the Pixel8 VGA bios is debug based, so it probably won't work with a remainder which is natively 256k (even if the actual file is bigger, it could be 256k mirrored multiple times within the remainder.img).

At least one kernel I tried, both packing with xbtool and using the method outlined above by stealth, failed to work with the phoenix loader. I'm not sure if that kernel (cplx 1.03 4627 debug) was the problem or if it's just a bad combo of kernel and 2bl/remainder.

[matt]

Ok, I will try it by hand and post results. I am thinking the remainder.img could be the problem because I am using the 2bl and remainder from the x2_4977, which is only 256K I believe. But then again it packed without error so maybe not.

Thanks for your help so far!

[Chips]

The Debug Vga BFM Bios is available in #xbins :p