Author Topic: Need to reflash a bricked BIOS  (Read 2990 times)

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Offline ImageJPEGTopic starter

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Need to reflash a bricked BIOS
« on: February 14, 2019, 08:34:52 pm »
Did a BIOS update. Even had the thing plugged into a UPS but the thing still got bricked.

So, I'm looking at getting this:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/XGecu-TL866II-Programmer-PLUS-for-SPI-Flash-NAND-EPROM-MCU-AVR-13-adapter-clip/192725987183?hash=item2cdf5d2f6f:g:PysAAOSwJ3RatMVW:rk:9:pf:0

To reprogram a BIOS chip from a Lenovo M600.

The chip is similar to this:
http://www.bios-chip24.com/MXIC-MX-25U6435F-M2I-10G-64MBit-SPI-Flash-SOIC-8/en

I can get the exact chip details in maybe a day.
 

Online wraper

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Re: Need to reflash a bricked BIOS
« Reply #1 on: February 14, 2019, 08:46:36 pm »
The question is, do you have actual firmware dump to flash? Firmware update which you can download on lenovo website is not suitable.
EDIT: just checked that it's not a laptop as I thought, so probably downloaded firmware will be fine. But still not certain as it is not standard ATX motherboard.
« Last Edit: February 14, 2019, 08:51:43 pm by wraper »
 

Online wraper

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Re: Need to reflash a bricked BIOS
« Reply #2 on: February 14, 2019, 08:59:57 pm »
In any case I suggest saving corrupted bios backup before flashing new one. It might be useful for cooking working bios from incomplete update file.
 

Offline DaJMasta

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Re: Need to reflash a bricked BIOS
« Reply #3 on: February 14, 2019, 09:03:08 pm »
There's a discussion of that programmer elsewhere, and it's decent, should do the job for you.  Make sure that the bios file is the raw image if you're writing it with a programmer, not some other format that needs to be interpreted by the firmware installer, then you're probably alright.


While it's unlikely in this case, I know some motherboard vendors were able to supply preprogrammed BIOS chips for their boards in the past - I think this is only likely if they are also socketed, which basically no laptop ones are, but it could be worth a customer service ticket.
 

Offline ImageJPEGTopic starter

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Re: Need to reflash a bricked BIOS
« Reply #4 on: February 15, 2019, 03:04:47 pm »
I was planning on reading and saving a BIOS image from a working computer of the same model. I'm in IT so I have quite a few of the same machine.

The exact chip in question is:
MXIC MX
25U6473F
M2I-10G
8C428400B2
L173695
 

Offline JFJ

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Re: Need to reflash a bricked BIOS
« Reply #5 on: February 15, 2019, 05:32:00 pm »
The Macronix MX25U6473F is in the TL866II Device Support List. So, copying the contents of one BIOS chip to another should be straight forward.
 

Offline mikerj

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Re: Need to reflash a bricked BIOS
« Reply #6 on: February 15, 2019, 05:38:22 pm »
For a one off you can simply use an Arduino as a serial flash programmer, have a look for "Serprog".  Works perfectly ok, if not the fastest.
 


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