Category Archives: bootloader

SMART Response XE Gets Wireless Bootloader

Posted on by

A few months back we first brought word of the progress being made in unlocking the SMART Response XE, an ATmega128RFA powered handheld computer that allowed teachers to create an interactive curriculum in the days before all the kids got Chromebooks. Featuring 2.4 Ghz wireless communication, a 384×160 LCD, and a full QWERTY keyboard, schools paid around $100 each for them 2010. Now selling for as little as $5 on eBay, these Arduino-compatible devices only need a little coaxing and an external programmer to get your own code running.

The previous post inspired [Larry Bank] to try his hand at …read more

Continue reading SMART Response XE Gets Wireless Bootloader→

CD Image Via Twitter: A Handcrafted Game Disc

Posted on by

Humans can turn anything into a competition. Someone always wants to be faster or drive a ball farther. Technical pursuits are no different, which is why a lot of people overclock or play regular expression golf. [Alok Menghrajani] sets himself some odd challenges. A few years ago, he hand-built a bootable floppy image that had a simple game onboard and managed to fit it in a Twitter message. Twitter has increased their number of characters, so — you guessed it — this time he’s back with a CDROM image.

His tweet is a command line that starts with perl. The …read more

Continue reading CD Image Via Twitter: A Handcrafted Game Disc→

Unbricking A 3D Printer The Hard Way: By Writing a Bootloader

Posted on by

There’s a sinking feeling when a firmware upgrade to a piece of equipment goes wrong. We’ve all likely had this happen and  bricked a device or two. If we are lucky we can simply reapply the upgrade or revert to a previous version, and if we’re unlucky we have to dive into a serial debug port to save the device from the junk pile. But what happens when both those routes fail? If you are [Arko], you reverse-engineer the device and write your own bootloader for it.

The offending bricked object was a Monoprice MP Mini Delta 3D printer to …read more

Continue reading Unbricking A 3D Printer The Hard Way: By Writing a Bootloader→

Over The Air Updates For Your Arduino

Posted on by

An Arduino and a data radio can make a great remote sensor node. Often in such situations, the hardware ends up installed somewhere hard to get to – be it in a light fitting, behind a wall, or secreted somewhere outdoors. Not places that you’d want to squeeze a cable repeatedly into while debugging.

[2BitOrNot2Bit] decided this simply wouldn’t do, and decided to program the Arduinos over the air instead.

Using the NRF24L01 chip with the Arduino is a popular choice to add wireless communications to a small project. By installing one of these radios on both the remote hardware …read more

Continue reading Over The Air Updates For Your Arduino→

Write Your Own x86 Bootloader

Posted on by

What if you want to make a very lean machine and do without any operating system? Or maybe you want to try to write your own OS, even just for the challenge or fun? Maybe you were reading up on a cool OS architecture and thought to yourself, “I can write that!”. Well, before diving into your code, you’d first have to write something called a bootloader.

A bootloader is code that runs early on in a PC’s, Mac’s, Raspberry Pi’s or microcontroller’s boot sequence, before anything like an operating system is up. Often its job is to set up …read more

Continue reading Write Your Own x86 Bootloader→

Write Your Own x86 Bootloader

Posted on by

What if you want to make a very lean machine and do without any operating system? Or maybe you want to try to write your own OS, even just for the challenge or fun? Maybe you were reading up on a cool OS architecture and thought to yourself, “I can write that!”. Well, before diving into your code, you’d first have to write something called a bootloader.

A bootloader is code that runs early on in a PC’s, Mac’s, Raspberry Pi’s or microcontroller’s boot sequence, before anything like an operating system is up. Often its job is to set up …read more

Continue reading Write Your Own x86 Bootloader→

Multiple Vulnerabilities Found in NVIDIA, Qualcomm, Huawei Bootloaders

Posted on by

Researchers find six previously unknown memory corruption and unlock-bypass vulnerabilities in major chipset vendors’ firmware code. Continue reading Multiple Vulnerabilities Found in NVIDIA, Qualcomm, Huawei Bootloaders→

Mobile Bootloaders From Top Manufacturers Found Vulnerable to Persistent Threats

Posted on by

Security researchers have discovered several severe zero-day vulnerabilities in the mobile bootloaders from at least four popular device manufacturers that could allow an attacker to gain persistent root access on the device.

A team of nine security r… Continue reading Mobile Bootloaders From Top Manufacturers Found Vulnerable to Persistent Threats→

Doing It With Fewer Bytes Than Bill Gates

Posted on by

The MITS Altair 8800 occupies a unique place in computing history as the first commercially succesful microcomputer for personal rather than business use. It is famous as the platform upon which the first Microsoft product ran, their first BASIC interpreter.

[Josh Bensadon] has an Altair 8800, and became intrigued by its bootloader. The simplest method of programming the machine is through binary using a set of switches on the front panel, and he remarks that there should be a warning in the manual: “fingers will get sore after repeated use of the small switches on the ALTAIR”.

In the Altair …read more

Continue reading Doing It With Fewer Bytes Than Bill Gates→