iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Every time an email from a new Satoshi impersonator lands in my inbox, I'm tempted to respond with some variant of "write better fan fiction" or "bait used to be believable".

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Ava Chow @achow101.com · 11/05/2026

live now cryptography that pays sliently www.twitch.tv/achow101

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Ava Chow @achow101.com · 27/04/2026

live now waiting for github to fix itself www.twitch.tv/achow101

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Ava Chow @achow101.com · 24/04/2026

Why are llm generated bug reports and fixes so fucking verbose? Yes, lets write a whole essay that takes multiple minutes to read for a one line change whose effects can be described in a single sentence.

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Ava Chow @achow101.com · 22/04/2026

Love that Cirrus decided to shut down today instead of 5 weeks from now like they said they were going to.

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Ava Chow @achow101.com · 20/04/2026

live now what have I missed? www.twitch.tv/achow101

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Ava Chow @achow101.com · 06/04/2026

live now code review? www.twitch.tv/achow101

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Ava Chow @achow101.com · 30/03/2026

live now doesn't oom www.twitch.tv/achow101

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Ava Chow @achow101.com · 23/03/2026

live now moar psbt www.twitch.tv/achow101

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Ava Chow @achow101.com · 16/03/2026

live now looking my old pr(s) www.twitch.tv/achow101

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Ava Chow @achow101.com · 26/02/2026

The clamp I got supposedly came with an adapter, but that adapter didn't actually adapt the 16 pins from the clamp to the 8 pins for the CH341A, so I ended up rewiring it manually.

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Ava Chow @achow101.com · 26/02/2026

The R740 needed a SOP16 as that's the form factor of the chip. SOP8 won't fit and also the pinout is different. www.mxic.com.tw/Lists/Datash... is the datasheet for the chip that was in my R740. I rewired the SOP16 clip according to the pinout diagrams on page 6.

mxic.com.tw

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Ava Chow @achow101.com · 23/02/2026

live now bug hunting www.twitch.tv/achow101

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Ava Chow @achow101.com · 20/02/2026

> what OS are you using? Proxmox > what happens if you run a BIOS update from Dell? Or a firmware update? Dunno, haven't had a chance to try. I expect a BIOS update to overwrite the mod, but not any firmware update except maybe iDRAC.

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Ava Chow @achow101.com · 20/02/2026

No, the clamp connects to the pins directly, it's just a little bit fiddly. I would read the chip 3 times and make sure all 3 reads got the exact same dump, and not disconnect or even touch the programmer until I was done writing the modified BIOS back.

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Ava Chow @achow101.com · 20/02/2026

4. Boot into the OS, build the ReBarState program, and run it with a parameter of 32:, i.e. ./ReBarState 32 I didn't need to do the UEFIPatch or DSDT Patching steps. For all of the BIOS chip reading and writing, I use the flashrom tool.

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Ava Chow @achow101.com · 20/02/2026

2. Modify the dumped BIOS with UEFITool. The ReBar FFS goes in the volume with the last DXE module, before the volume with the first PEI module. For me, this was immediately after the module with GUID 7F7292E8-B594-45FA-92CD-78534D8B7EEC 3. Write the modified BIOS back to the chip

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Ava Chow @achow101.com · 20/02/2026

Step by step, it was: 1. Dump the BIOS with an external programmer. I used a CH341A off of Amazon with a SOP16 clamp. Normally BIOS chips are SOP8, and that's what the CH341A expects, so the clamp needs to be rewired to match the SOP8 pinout. This is possible as they only use 8 of the pins anyways.

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Ava Chow @achow101.com · 20/02/2026

The main things were that I used an external BIOS programmer to dump the BIOS, placed the ReBar FFS module after the last DXE module, wrote the modified BIOS back to the chip, and used the ReBarState program to actually enable ReBar.

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Ava Chow @achow101.com · 16/02/2026

live now finding paths twitch.tv/achow101

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Ava Chow @achow101.com · 10/02/2026

HWI 3.2.0 is now available at github.com/bitcoin-core... or on PyPI at pypi.org/project/hwi/... This is a minor release which brings support for the Jade Plus and BitBox02 Nova devices.