If, like me, you own a PC computer, in the sense of an IBM PC, you have probably already seen these beautiful startup screens.

Quand j’pense à Lulu, Là je ne bande plus

Georges Brassens in the song Fernande

As you can see, the previous sentence is tinged with irony. In reality, when you start up a computer, you should generally expect anything but seduction. As Georges Brassens used to sing: “When I think of Lulu, I don’t get hard anymore.

Even if we don’t want to think about it, Lulu imposes itself and presents itself to us. In our situation, Lulu is usually this:

Some examples of startup images

Sometimes it’s even worse, Lulu takes the form of abstruse lines of text.

La bandaison papa Ça n’se commande pas

Georges Brassens in the song Fernande

Owner of a ZOTAC H55-ITX (H55ITX-A-E) motherboard, I wanted to make the startup, certainly not glamourous, but neutral. In fact, I chose a simple black image.

To start, I had to identify the BIOS manufacturer. In my case, I was dealing with a BIOS from American Megatrends, Inc.

Then, I had to understand how to modify this famous image. After some tribulations on the Internet, I managed to find the rare pearl [01], the tool of the BIOS craftsman.

Finally, after having handled the BIOS chisel, I was able to insert the image of my choice.

Procedure for Changing the Logo in the BIOS Image

  1. Download a version of the BIOS from the motherboard manufacturer’s website. Usually the .rom file is included in a ZIP archive.
  2. Launch the MMTOOL tool 1. It works without problem with Wine.
  3. Open the .rom file with “Load ROM”.
  4. Choose the “Insert” tab.
  5. Identify the OEM Logo line in the list and select it.
  6. Choose the image with the “Browse” button.
  7. Click on the “Insert” button.
  8. Click on the “Save ROM as…” button.

MMTOOL

BIOS Replacement

Once the grafting operation is done, you can replace the BIOS with the method of your choice:

  1. Use the tools provided by the manufacturer: under Windows or DOS generally, but also available under Linux.
  2. Start the computer in recovery mode. The most elegant method and above all the easiest to use.

References

  1. MMTOOL ↩