Crazy ass netbook bios (Acer Aspire One)

[R-T-B]

So you know how laptops have lame ass bioses that don't allow anything? Aparently Acer's NETBOOK division didn't get the memo.

Courtesy my friend @Toothless, I got a netbook this weekend to play with. It's working well, but it had a bios password and that annoyed me. Frustrated and unable to remove it, I started trying random things a retard would try. Things like "123" and "333" and finally " ". Yep, an ascii space. It unlocked a strange bios unlike anything I have ever seen... backdoor? If so, this was scary easy to get at:

Starts out fairly normal:

Some options

Next tab... holy frickin' mother of jeebus:

There's too much to cover, but here are the highlights:

Yes, thermal and fan control. Anyone wanna melt a netbook?

Oh, you say I can disable prochot too? That seems like a ... bad idea.

lol I can set the bios res (along with other stuff I don't understand):

But I don't even have an expresscard... and what's all this stuff? I think I could break something here...

APIC and HPET settings, in the flesh:

ASPM controls and... a lot of other junk that I have no idea what it does:

Full ATA and bios level security settings. This is normally not on anything but enterprise notebooks. Yes, it works, I even got my SED HD out of storage from my bitcoin days to test...

Yes, you can turn off C-states if you want a molten-book. Any idea what "Geyserville" is and if I want it?

And finally, I can turn off old school PCI clock stopping to eat even more energies. Captain Planet would oppose this bios.

So, toothless, where'd this thing come from again? It's freaky weird.

 

[Toothless]

What the f*ck.

 

[R-T-B]

I like how the one greyed out thing is the XD bit setting.

You can burn your notebook to a crisp, but viri may not run buffer overflow attacks!

 

[blobster21]

what's going on with those pictures, 6 minutes later and the page is still not fully loaded @12Mbits/s ?!

 

[R-T-B]

Yeah, they are on my personal pics server (because I was lazy) and not downscaled. Bleh. Lemme fix that.

EDIT: Pictures are resized to a normal level. I'll move them to TPU hosting when I'm not working on this netbook, like this afternoon. For now enjoy the strangeness.

 

[GoldenX]

Awesome!

 

[Toothless]

So theoretically you can make it explode.

Did I just give you a fun project or what?

 

[jboydgolfer]

Email acer for an updated bios.......

I couldnt continue without actually laughing.

 

[RejZoR]

I wish I'd knw this when I had the old Aspire One (the Atom N270 one). I do have ACER Iconia W4 tablet. Maybe I could try fiddling with this one, it has very limited BIOS as well. Where exactly did you input those passwords?

 

[R-T-B]

I wish I'd knw this when I had the old Aspire One (the Atom N270 one). I do have ACER Iconia W4 tablet. Maybe I could try fiddling with this one, it has very limited BIOS as well. Where exactly did you input those passwords?

It had a standard "setup password" Hit F2, it asks for password, input ascii "Space" character as password, bingo.

Not sure if this is normal. It's also possible someone flashed some kinda modded bios to it at some point, but it wasn't me at any rate.

Did I just give you a fun project or what?

The question is how long it will live with my curiosity and ALL THESE OPTIONS.

It just begs for CPU overclocking options though, the most I can do is turn off energy saving and maybe ramp up the fan to compensate...

 

[Toothless]

I wish I'd knw this when I had the old Aspire One (the Atom N270 one). I do have ACER Iconia W4 tablet. Maybe I could try fiddling with this one, it has very limited BIOS as well. Where exactly did you input those passwords?

I have the N270 and it doesn't have that many fun stuffs.

 

[R-T-B]

I have the N270 and it doesn't have that many fun stuffs.

You didn't know what you were giving away... I can think of a million fun experiments for this thing now.

 

[RejZoR]

Well, I stuffed Intel X-25M into that little thing back then so there's that Used software tool to control the fan and basically ran it passive on desktop when idling or doing mild load. It was actually pretty snappy little bastard considering how crappy it was.

 

[R-T-B]

Well, I stuffed Intel X-25M into that little thing back then so there's that Used software tool to control the fan and basically ran it passive on desktop when idling or doing mild load. It was actually pretty snappy little bastard considering how crappy it was.

Actually, I'm mildly impressed at this little netbook as it stands. It's not fast by any means, but for web browsing on a hand compiled gentoo x64 build I made, it gets the job done without any major pain.

Using a single platter 7200RPM spinner disk from Seagate right now with a decent cache. It's not terribly slow. SSD would pep it up sure but I can't justify that in a netbook today, lol. I'm considering loading windows now just to get some CPU-Z benches out of this for curiosity sake.

I don't suppose there are any software solutions for OCing an atom?

 

[Toothless]

Actually, I'm mildly impressed at this little netbook as it stands. It's not fast by any means, but for web browsing on a hand compiled gentoo x64 build I made, it gets the job done without any major pain.

Using a single platter 7200RPM spinner disk from Seagate right now with a decent cache. It's not terribly slow. SSD would pep it up sure but I can't justify that in a netbook today, lol. I'm considering loading windows now just to get some CPU-Z benches out of this for curiosity sake.

I don't suppose there are any software solutions for OCing an atom?

This is worth getting if you have the spare cash,

If you find Atom OCing stuff lemme know. My N270 has huge thermal headroom to play with.


Also now I can say you have a white/pink teeny wheeny lappy top.

 

[R-T-B]

Also now I can say you have a white/pink teeny wheeny lappy top.

That's why I'm making it into a mini-server. I can't take this thing out in public... but that's a subject for our PMs man... lol

 

[Toothless]

That's why I'm making it into a mini-server. I can't take this thing out in public... but that's a subject for our PMs man... lol

How do you think I felt when my little sister saw it.

 

[R-T-B]

How do you think I felt when my little sister saw it.

I'm guessing it wasn't like a big daddy from Bioshock?

Now we need to stop or this is going to GN, and I have a reputation to uphold... or at least I pretend to.

 

[Toothless]

I'm guessing it wasn't like a big daddy from Bioshock?

Now we need to stop or this is going to GN, and I have a reputation to uphold... or at least I pretend to.

Does the 4GB stick hold up well?

 

[R-T-B]

Does the 4GB stick hold up well?

Yeah, the memory is being used mostly as a massive disk cache right now but it helps a lot on a weaker system like this. Also, those VRAM options in the bios let me give it 256MBs of ram to the video, which is almost normal for a DirectX 9 capable card. Too bad I'm not running windows.

 

[Toothless]

Yeah, the memory is being used mostly as a massive disk cache right now but it helps a lot on a weaker system like this. Also, those VRAM options in the bios let me give it 256MBs of ram to the video, which is almost normal for a DirectX 9 capable card. Too bad I'm not running windows.

Sounds good! Spent $50 on that stick but honestly I'm happy that little thing is being used and will be taken care of and loved until the thermal monitor gets shut off and it explodes.

 

[Caring1]

I used to have an old Acer laptop with the Pentium 2 something GHz.
It had the hidden BIOS too, but I didn't need the password to get in, once I was in the BIOS I just hit F2 and it was there.