Dell: BIOS Test Engineer: Testing low-level BIOS: OA30 Conroller

Here's a classic example of testing BIOS features. This was a very 'hands on' role as BIOS testing new features is very much an exploratory effort with each feature usually having a specific tool to dump data for verification purposes. With each test, the protocol and storage parameters needed to be learned and documented for later use. Working on the latest offerings means there wasn't a substantial amount of tools available for automation. In this case, the component is used for verifying a Genuine OS is installed on the target system. This would be injected by the OEM manufacturer and when the OA30 feature was enabled on the system it will not boot an OS with another ID. The first issues was a build configuration issue. The second was a payload missing issue. On the third attempt everything worked as designed.

OA30-MSDM.bin: ACPI MSDM Table Breakdown

ACPI Table / MSDM Payload

00000000 4d 53 44 4d 55 00 00 00 03 88 4d 53 54 45 53 54 MSDMU....^MSTEST

00000010 4d 53 2d 54 41 42 4c 45 00 00 00 00 54 45 53 54 MS-TABLE....TEST

00000020 00 00 00 00 01 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 01 00 00 00 ................

00000030 00 00 00 00 1d 00 00 00 XX XX XX XX XX 2d XX XX ........XXXXX-XXX

00000040 XX XX XX 2d XX XX XX XX XX 2d XX XX XX XX XX 2d XXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-

00000050 XX XX XX XX XX XXXXXX

Field	Description	Length (Bytes)	Byte Offset (Decimal Position)	Example
Signature	MSDM	4	0	MSDM
Length	0x55	4	4	0x55
Revision	0x03	1	8	0x03
Checksum	Entire table checksum value.	1	9	0x88
OEMID	OEMID string. If you previously used OA 2.x, then your OA 3.0 OEMID string value must match your OA 2.x OEMID string.	6	10	MSTEST
OEMTableID	OEMTableID string. If you previously used OA 2.x, then your OA 3.0 OEMTableID string value must match your OA 2.x OEMTableID string.	8	16	MS-TABLE
OEM Revision	0x0	4	24	0x0
Creator ID	Vendor ID for the table creation utility.	4	28	TEST
Creator Revision	Revision value of the utility that created the table.	4	32	0x0
MSDM Version	0x1	4	36	0x1
MSDM Reserved	0x0	4	40	0x0
MSDM Data Type	0x1	4	44	0X1
MSDM Data Reserved	0x0	4	48	0x0
MSDM Data Length	0x1D	4	52	0x1D
MSDM Data	Product key value, including hyphens (-).	29	56	XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX

OA30ctrl64.exe

Dumps the contents of the MSDM table
OA30Ctrl Command Line options

E = Dump MSDM table info (“Marker”)

R = Clear the MSDM table (“Marker”)

OA:<MarkerFile> = Inject the BIOS with “something.bin”

D = Hide the MSDM table

H = Show the MSDM table

First BIOS test was missing the component:

C:\OA30>oa30ctrl64.exe E

OA30Ctrl32.exe -- Version 0.900

ERROR: Could not locate the OA30 Protocol

EFI_STATUS = EFI_OUT_OF_RESOURCES

Application return code (0xFF)

AMI eBIOS tool had HiiParser_SUPPORT = OFF
Turn HiiParser_SUPPORT = ON)
Rebuilt BIOS -> 12M.bin
Flashed system
Also noticed DM.Bin that came with the Feature.zip was missing ACPI Table portion

00 01 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 01 00 00 00 00 00 00 00

10 1d 00 00 00 XX XX XX XX XX 2d XX XX XX XX XX 2d

20 36 53 48 35 XX 2d 32 44 49 34 XX 2d XX XX XX XX

30 XX

Not sure if the control was integrated properly in the BIOS so integrated manually against the source tree of latest stable release