The graph has the bumps it does because that distribution was necessary to punish the ambitions of some poor geek somewhere.

def decompress(fc):
    fc2 = fc.splitlines(True)
    fc3 = "".join(fc2[1:]) # could verify that it's asc-gzip here if we wanted to...
    unb64 = base64.standard_b64decode(fc3)

    ctr = 0
    ret = []
    while 1:
        if ctr == len(unb64): break

        ccltop = ord(unb64[ctr])
        ctr += 1
        cclbottom = ord(unb64[ctr])
        ctr += 1
        compressedchunklen = ccltop * 256 + cclbottom

        cltop = ord(unb64[ctr])
        ctr += 1
        clbottom = ord(unb64[ctr])
        ctr += 1
        chunklen = cltop * 256 + clbottom
        #~ print compressedchunklen, chunklen

        compressedchunk = unb64[ctr:ctr+compressedchunklen]
        ctr += compressedchunklen

        chunk = zlib.decompress(compressedchunk)
        assert(len(chunk) ==  chunklen)
        ret.append(chunk)

    return "".join(ret)

Hmm, looks like they don’t have an option in the BIOS to reflash from USB, either. That’s sorta annoying, now that I look at it.

There’s probably some way to run their .exe under Wine to extract the .rom file, then use something like http://www.coreboot.org/Flashrom to do the flashing. I haven’t tried any such method, so I can’t say whether it’ll work. I suppose another option is to try to get a Windows bootable CD like http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/ built, then use run the HP flasher under that.

*Fine Print: any time means whenever I am not sleeping, not doing anything else, and near a computer with an active internet connection, and assumes that I have checked my email and/or feed reader recently.

And this particular error happened at 12:26:03.387 on the 12th of October, 2008 (I am assuming a US date format here, otherwise there is time travel involved).

It was attempting to subscribe to an out of range sequence. From my expert analysis, sequence 5 is out of range. Try a lower sequence. Or maybe a higher one. Depends on what the range is. Or a different client ID, if the range depends on the client ID.

I hope that was helpful.