The download of this programe can be found at http://www.letscommunicate.co.uk/carpc/ I - the webmaster - , letscommunicate.co.uk and Complete Communication Soulutions accept NO responsiblity if you get this wrong and mess your computer up. READ THESE INSTRCUTIONS VERY VERY CAREFULLY ( webmaster@letscommunicate.co.uk ) AWBMTools - a pair of utilities for creating full-screen BIOS Boot logos. Copyright (c) 2002 by Alastair M. Robinson Email: blackfive@fakenhamweb.co.uk Legal: ~~~~~~ These programs (AWBM2TIFF and TIFF2AWBM) are free software; you can redistribute them and/or modify them under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version. This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details. You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307 USA *PLEASE NOTE* Flashing the BIOS on your computer is risky at the best of times - flashing the BIOS with a modified BIOS image is *VERY DANGEROUS* and may well result in a non-working motherboard that is very difficult, if not impossible, to resurrect. You use these programs, and their results entirely at your own risk. Background: ~~~~~~~~~~~ The VIA EPIA motherboard, with recent BIOS versions, has the ability to display a fullscreen boot logo when booting, instead of the usual POST screen. The logo itself is embedded in the BIOS image, and although its 'filename' has the extension .BMP, it is *not* a BMP file - it's an odd but simplistic format referred to herein as AWBM. The boot logos created by this program have only been tested so far with my VIA EPIA motherboard. They may work with other boards with similar BIOS capabilities, they may not. What does it do? ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ AWBM2TIFF and TIFF2AWBM convert images between 8-bit (256-colour) TIFF and the custom AWBM format used by the EPIA BIOS. What doesn't it do? ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ These programs *CANNOT* modify a BIOS image, or extract logos from a BIOS image. For that you need a program like CBROM (version 2.xx recommended, Windows only, unfortunately). These programs are only intended for use with full-screen logos - they *CANNOT* be used to create EPA (Enery Star) logos. How do I customise my Boot Logo? ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ First create your logo in a graphics package. For the EPIA you need to make a 640x480 image with 256 colours. Once you've done that, save it as a TIFF file, and use: TIFF2AWBM logo.tiff logo.bmp to convert to AWBM format. (The original logo in the EPIA BIOS has the filename VPSD.BMP, though it's most definitely *not* a BMP file...) Now use CBROM to insert this logo into the BIOS image, by typing: CBROM EPIA0205.BIN /logo logo.bmp If this succeeds, you can now flash your machine with the modified BIOS image. Note - if your logo is very elaborate, CBROM may complain that there isn't enough room in the BIOS file. The EPIA0205.BIN BIOS has about 18k of free space for the logo - but a 640x480x256 image takes about 300k uncompressed. The BIOS image is a basically a catalogue of lha files, so you can use lha to guage how much space your logo will take when it's compressed: lha a test.lha logo.bmp *HINT* If you're having trouble keeping your logos small enough, try to avoid dithering, and make sure any gradients are vertical (i.e. horizontal scanlines have constant colour); this will help maximise the compression that can be achieved. Library information: ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ These programs link against libtiff, which is: Copyright (c) 1988-1997 Sam Leffler Copyright (c) 1991-1997 Silicon Graphics, Inc. Permission to use, copy, modify, distribute, and sell this software and its documentation for any purpose is hereby granted without fee, provided that (i) the above copyright notices and this permission notice appear in all copies of the software and related documentation, and (ii) the names of Sam Leffler and Silicon Graphics may not be used in any advertising or publicity relating to the software without the specific, prior written permission of Sam Leffler and Silicon Graphics. THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS-IS" AND WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS, IMPLIED OR OTHERWISE, INCLUDING WITHOUT LIMITATION, ANY WARRANTY OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. IN NO EVENT SHALL SAM LEFFLER OR SILICON GRAPHICS BE LIABLE FOR ANY SPECIAL, INCIDENTAL, INDIRECT OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES OF ANY KIND, OR ANY DAMAGES WHATSOEVER RESULTING FROM LOSS OF USE, DATA OR PROFITS, WHETHER OR NOT ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF DAMAGE, AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, ARISING OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE USE OR PERFORMANCE OF THIS SOFTWARE. libtiff links against libjpeg6b (so is based in part on the work of the Independent JPEG Group) and libz (which is (C) 1995-1998 Jean-loup Gailly and Mark Adler).