TechTablets › Forums › Cube Forums › Cube Mix Plus › updated firmware
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April 15, 2018 at 4:57 am #141982
It is really handy that TechTablets provides Windows 10 image for download (https://techtablets.com/downloads-drivers-roms/).
This is huge since it seems to include all of Windows along with the firmware.
Unfortunately, this is out of date. The latest version of the file is available through http://www.cube-tablet.com/download
Search down for “Mix Plus”. The latest version is dated 2018-1-31. But I cannot seem to download this. It fails a few hundred megabytes in.
Has anyone successfully downloaded this? Could it be made available on TechTablets?
Is there any place to get the firmware without all of Windows?
April 16, 2018 at 12:47 pm #142008April 16, 2018 at 3:52 pm #142017firmware? what is firmware? what it is? Mean bios?
Few machines have had BIOS in recent years. Certainly not the Cube Mix Plus. It has UEFI firmware instead.
Most (but not all) UEFI firmware includes a CSM (Compatibility Support Module). CSM enables BIOS emulation. It is mostly useful for running old OSes, like DOS or WinXP. Or letting you boot off an old system’s disk.
That’s what I meant by “firmware”. A little sloppy because there are other bits of firmware in our system and perhaps they can be updated. For example, my keyboard has some bugs: can its firmware be updated?
April 19, 2018 at 6:18 am #142083I cannot download the file too. The file is rather big (6.9gb) to be just the bios file. Presumably it is the windows 10 image or something like that.
April 19, 2018 at 11:18 am #142087firmware? what is firmware? what it is? Mean bios?
Few machines have had BIOS in recent years. Certainly not the Cube Mix Plus. It has UEFI firmware instead. Most (but not all) UEFI firmware includes a CSM (Compatibility Support Module). CSM enables BIOS emulation. It is mostly useful for running old OSes, like DOS or WinXP. Or letting you boot off an old system’s disk. That’s what I meant by “firmware”. A little sloppy because there are other bits of firmware in our system and perhaps they can be updated. For example, my keyboard has some bugs: can its firmware be updated?
So it is a new UEFI and CMS frimware? How do you flash it?
For my Lenovo laptop the UEFI BIOS update is like this
https://download.lenovo.com/consumer/mobiles/bdcn61ww.txt
Updated Date 2015/08/18 Software name BDCN61WW Support models S41-70, U41-70, Flex 3-1570, Yoga 500-15IBD, Yoga 500-15IHW, Flex 3-1470, Yoga 500-14IBD, Yoga 500-14IHW Operating Systems Microsoft Windows 10 32/64-bit Microsoft Windows 8.1 32/64-bit Microsoft Windows 8 32/64-bit Microsoft Windows 7 32/64-bit Note: Refer to marketing materials to find out what computer models support which Operating Systems. Version 61 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- What this package does: BIOS, abbreviation of Basic Input/Output System, is integrated in ROM chip on main board, which contains the basic Input/output program, system configuration information, system startup self-check and pre-setup programs.
I dont know what other name by UEFI CSM and such
I think firmware is more like my SSD microcode
Or my Wirelesss chip flashable Read-only Memory
That has nothing to do with Windows 10?
And about the wording, from this, people call new UEFI standard : UEFI BIOS
https://www.bios-mods.com/forum/Forum-Phoenix-Unlocking-Requests
And from the Electric community
“Different types of ROM include PROM (programmable read-only memory), EPROM (erasable programmable read only memory), EEPROM (electrically erasable programmable read-only memory) and Flash Memory. These are most commonly used to distribute firmware.”
Are you sure the download include FIRMWARE? Not just some Windows 10 DRIVERS?
I am so tired of reading dirty cheap Chinese marketing tactics
April 19, 2018 at 3:21 pm #142101This message is all about UEFI firmware in general. You can safely ignore it.
This explains the term “UEFI firmware” pretty well: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unified_Extensible_Firmware_Interface
Motherboard firmware generally lives in an EEPROM. At boot, it gets copied to RAM by some magic that I’m not aware of. It then runs, configuring lots of hardware bits, and then does all those things that you’ve seen it do: the configuration screen, the boot selector, booting. Even after booting, the firmware is still involved: SMM, ACPI, UEFI API calls from the OS. And the optional CSM even supports old-fashioned MBR booting and BIOS API calls from the OS or user programs.
Updating firmware amounts to “programming” (rewriting) the EEPROM. This is done by a specialized program supplied by the firmware vendor. They always used to run under DOS. Then came versions that ran under Windows now (who has DOS? (besides me)). There are versions that run directly under UEFI (under the covers, I whould guess that they all work that way now). There are even versions of the firmware that can update themselves, given a copy of the firmware in the correct form.
The “new world” of firmware updating seems to be: load a firmware update onto the EFI System Partition and reboot the machine in a way that the firmware installs that new version. For a while, this looked really straight forward since:
- UEFI came with a “shell” that looked a lot like DOS’s command line (or Windows’ cmd.exe)
- the UEFI shell ran without any OS. It provided an environment quite a bit more powerful than DOS
- but: that environment had its own API, so programs that ran in it had to be written for for it
- programs meant to run in this environment have a .efi suffix
- the EFI System Partition is just a FAT filesystem, so all OSes know how to write things to it
- but: Microsoft apparently forbid vendors from shipping systems with the UEFI Shell!
- but: it is still possible to run an .efi program. That’s what booting does: it runs one .efi program
As a Linux user, I really care how one can update firmware. If it requires Windows, that means I have to have a Windows license and installation, potentially a big waste. (I don’t mind on the Cube Mix Plus since Windows is a better tablet OS than Fedora Linux.)
Fun fact: did you know that modern x86 processors like the one in the Cube Mix Plus include a tiny hidden extra x86 processor called the Management Engine? This runs a version of Minix (the authors of Minix only recently heard about this). Minix is another UNIX like system, like Linux. In fact, Linux was created by Linus Torvalds as an improvement on Minix. We only know this because people have found bugs that let them fiddle with the ME, potentially breaking the security of all modern x86 chips. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Management_Engine
April 19, 2018 at 3:46 pm #142104The multi-gig file does include firmware updates. I looked inside of the .rar available for download on this site.
Unfortunately, it is too old to include the security updates released by Intel. The latest release by Intel is from this year.
Intel releases microcode updates for their processors. These could correctly be called firmware, but they are NOT UEFI firmware. They are supplied to Intel’s customers as binary blobs. The UEFI firmware has the blob embedded in it and when the UEFI firmware starts up, it uploads the blob in a specific way to the processor. Since UEFI firmware updates are rather haphazard, Windows and Linux each also try to install the latest blobs they have.
Some Intel processor security bugs must be patched by the UEFI firmware: patching in the OS is too late. That certainly includes the Management Engine bugs disclosed last year.
Another problem for us: there are several variants of the Cube Mix Plus motherboard. As I understand it, each motherboard needs a slightly different UEFI firmware. Flashing the firmware for the wrong variant causes problems.
On my Cube Mix Plus, when I enter the firmware setup screen, I’m told:
- BIOS Vendor: American Megatrends
- Core Version: 5.12
- Project Version: Cubei18-DL 0.05 x64
- Build Date and Time: 05/27/20017 09:35:28
I think that the motherboard is of type DL.
I think i18 is meant to be like “i18n”, standards-speak for “internationalization”.
The “stepping” (revision) of my processor is HO/J0.
What does your firmware setup page say?
April 20, 2018 at 1:55 am #142121As an Electric Engineer, I can say Intel microcode is not considered firmware as it is not persistent during session.
Intel microcode is not the same as peripheral microcode like a SSD firmware which is flashed to the EEPROM,
Microcode updates are not permanent and vanish when the CPU is reset. The microcode updates are usually supplied via motherboard firmware updates. The firmware updates the CPU microcode when your system boots.
There’s a section in the BIOS that usually contains about 8-12 2048-byte blocks of microcode for the different CPU steppings supported. Only the block which matches the stepping of the CPU is loaded.
Can you confirm which firmware update for which hardware is included in the image?
Besides the Intel non-persist-able microcode?
April 20, 2018 at 2:10 am #142122As a Microsoft Professional, and a linux user, I can say:
The term FIRMWARE in a Windows PC refer to software code embedded in EPROM or EEPROM
Not the same idea as peripheral loadable binary blob in the linux operating system.
This differentiate is especially applicable to the Cube Mix Plus, which is purported as a Windows PC
The release date info in your UEFI BIOS, mean nothing new.
It is just like the manufacture date of the Cube Mix Plus
It has nothing to prove itself new embedded microcode.
If you mean a Cube Mix Plus released in July 2017 is superior to the one released in March 2017
I thunk It is just a dishonest marketing campaign from ALDO CUBE got very tiny portion of the market share.
Almost unknown brand, no warranty.
Not any big player in the market, like HP, DELL, APPLE, ASUS, etc, ever use the term FIRMWARE the way ALDO CUBE are using
to trick beginners
April 20, 2018 at 2:39 am #142123April 20, 2018 at 12:14 pm #142128Let’s not argue about the term firmware.
No, the date of the firmware matters. It is not the manufacturing date of the device. The manufacturing date is not disclosed to us (but could be narrowed down by any labels on components; chips often have a date code on them specifying the week of manufacture).
What does msinfo32 say about your tablet?
April 20, 2018 at 12:26 pm #142131The multi-gig file “Cube Mix Plus(i18)Windows10 image.rar” downloadable from TechTablets includes this file:
..A…. 8388608 2016-11-14 18:38 BIOS/BIOS.bin
The newer version that I could only partially download from Aldo contains
..A…. 8388608 2016-11-14 18:38 BIOS/BIOS.bin
So they sure appear to be the same.
April 22, 2018 at 3:57 pm #142190April 22, 2018 at 6:02 pm #142191since last update, my windows death so I have only this
The picture show some kind of Linux. You could try the dmidecode command. On my system, I find the following amongst the dmidecode output:
BIOS Information
Release Date: 05/27/2017
Product Name: i18-DL
Or you could look at the firmware setup screen.
April 28, 2018 at 10:22 am #142430 -
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