Author Topic: Dell Vostro 470 - need BIOS file to reprogram BIOS chip  (Read 13047 times)

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Offline FolxsTopic starter

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Re: Dell Vostro 470 - need BIOS file to reprogram BIOS chip
« Reply #25 on: November 10, 2015, 12:34:45 am »
 

Offline Deathwish

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Re: Dell Vostro 470 - need BIOS file to reprogram BIOS chip
« Reply #26 on: November 10, 2015, 12:36:25 am »
There ya go :) my brain isnt so defunct then
Electrons are typically male, always looking for any hole to get into.
trying to strangle someone who talks out of their rectal cavity will fail, they can still breath.
God hates North Wales, he has put my home address on the blacklist of all couriers with instructions to divert all parcels.
 

Offline FolxsTopic starter

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Re: Dell Vostro 470 - need BIOS file to reprogram BIOS chip
« Reply #27 on: November 10, 2015, 12:39:11 am »
:D ok, I'm going to bed - later I'll upload file. Good night!
 

Offline Deathwish

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Re: Dell Vostro 470 - need BIOS file to reprogram BIOS chip
« Reply #28 on: November 10, 2015, 12:42:30 am »
Sleep well. as a side note I found one of their older 8 gang parallel port programmers in a local council tip , took it home and repaired it and it worked, I had no idea they were so expensive. no idea where it ended up, probably in the stuff my ex wife threw out when i left her.
Electrons are typically male, always looking for any hole to get into.
trying to strangle someone who talks out of their rectal cavity will fail, they can still breath.
God hates North Wales, he has put my home address on the blacklist of all couriers with instructions to divert all parcels.
 

Offline FolxsTopic starter

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Re: Dell Vostro 470 - need BIOS file to reprogram BIOS chip
« Reply #29 on: November 10, 2015, 09:32:49 am »
So, here You are: Corrupted BIOS file (4MB) http://speedy.sh/vX75Q/Corrupted-Dell-Vostro-470-bios.bin
Chip and programmer are 100% fine
 

Offline ezcrazy

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Re: Dell Vostro 470 - need BIOS file to reprogram BIOS chip
« Reply #30 on: November 10, 2015, 03:12:52 pm »
This is not an incorrect file issue, this is either a bad EEPROM or an incompatible programmer. If the programming and the chip were actually doing their job, it should start writing the data from 0000000 until 0027FFF, there is no data in there though... The only data I've found as at the end of the read

Code: [Select]
E5 20 F1 FF FF FF FF 01 44 EB 08 6B 08 3B 80 BB
EE FF FF FF FF FF 00 00 FF FF 00 00 0C 20 0F 52
10 D8 00 00 FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF

Which I have tried matching to the BIOS file and no such data exists in the BIOS file, regardless if I make you a 4MB file and set the unused bytes as "FF", it's going to be useless because the programmer or your EEPROM is not writing properly to the chip. Let's also not forget that the BIOS just "disappeared", which makes the EEPROM sound at fault even though it is being detected.

Once the programmer can write successfully to the EEPROM, then we can talk about it not being a 4MB BIOS file, this is just like trying a 240v ONLY appliance in a 120v country and being surprised that its not turning on and you'd attempt to fix it, the first correct step would be to get a 240v up converter and try it there, because until you gave the thing 240v you won't know for sure if it works or not.

So, here You are: Corrupted BIOS file (4MB) http://speedy.sh/vX75Q/Corrupted-Dell-Vostro-470-bios.bin
Chip and programmer are 100% fine
 

Online wraper

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Re: Dell Vostro 470 - need BIOS file to reprogram BIOS chip
« Reply #31 on: November 10, 2015, 03:34:38 pm »
Which I have tried matching to the BIOS file and no such data exists in the BIOS file, regardless if I make you a 4MB file and set the unused bytes as "FF", it's going to be useless because the programmer or your EEPROM is not writing properly to the chip. Let's also not forget that the BIOS just "disappeared", which makes the EEPROM sound at fault even though it is being detected.

Once the programmer can write successfully to the EEPROM, then we can talk about it not being a 4MB BIOS file, this is just like trying a 240v ONLY appliance in a 120v country and being surprised that its not turning on and you'd attempt to fix it, the first correct step would be to get a 240v up converter and try it there, because until you gave the thing 240v you won't know for sure if it works or not.
This is not correct statement. I don't know any programmer which would write/read only half of the FLASH size (yes, it is not EEPROM BTW), they will just fill empty area at the end if the file size is smaller than FLASH. Moreover they do blank checking after erase and will report an error if it's not empty. So often you cannot just download the file an flash it. There might be more data somewhere in the middle, end or beginning which is not present in the bios update file. Often you need to cook the working file from corrupted FLASH contents and downloaded update file.
 

Offline FolxsTopic starter

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Re: Dell Vostro 470 - need BIOS file to reprogram BIOS chip
« Reply #32 on: November 10, 2015, 03:40:32 pm »
Wait a moment - this is the file BEFORE anything.
You want to get file from me when I flash BIOS with update?

Or elese:
What I have to do?
 

Offline ezcrazy

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Re: Dell Vostro 470 - need BIOS file to reprogram BIOS chip
« Reply #33 on: November 10, 2015, 04:38:08 pm »
Which I have tried matching to the BIOS file and no such data exists in the BIOS file, regardless if I make you a 4MB file and set the unused bytes as "FF", it's going to be useless because the programmer or your EEPROM is not writing properly to the chip. Let's also not forget that the BIOS just "disappeared", which makes the EEPROM sound at fault even though it is being detected.

Once the programmer can write successfully to the EEPROM, then we can talk about it not being a 4MB BIOS file, this is just like trying a 240v ONLY appliance in a 120v country and being surprised that its not turning on and you'd attempt to fix it, the first correct step would be to get a 240v up converter and try it there, because until you gave the thing 240v you won't know for sure if it works or not.
This is not correct statement. I don't know any programmer which would write/read only half of the FLASH size (yes, it is not EEPROM BTW), they will just fill empty area at the end if the file size is smaller than FLASH. Moreover they do blank checking after erase and will report an error if it's not empty. So often you cannot just download the file an flash it. There might be more data somewhere in the middle, end or beginning which is not present in the bios update file. Often you need to cook the working file from corrupted FLASH contents and downloaded update file.

FLASH is just a variation of an EEPROM at the end of the day the chip he's trying to program still uses SPI (just a lot faster), I never claimed you can read/write half a FLASH/EEPROM chip, I've even told him that's what the DELL flashing utility is doing
Quote
I've added you, we'll try to fill the rest of the file with 0's, because in reality that's what the DELL flashing APP is doing. I will have access to a PC that uses the same BIOS as yours but I don't have any ETA on that.

The first step to helping people is not to assume anything, thus why I did not assume he did use the "verify" option which is available in some software so that the user can untick it in order not to waste time. (I've done it several times with bus pirate). Please do not forget that the user does not have a working BIOS file and I do not have any ETA on when I'd be able to access a similar board as his that uses the same BIOS to dump it.

At the end of the day I'm all for learning new stuff but you have not provided any steps the user could try with his $1000 programmer, plus the user gave me the before file, it only contains data on the bottom according to a hex editor.

OT: I want the file after the BIOS update.
 

Online wraper

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Re: Dell Vostro 470 - need BIOS file to reprogram BIOS chip
« Reply #34 on: November 10, 2015, 05:18:33 pm »
he first step to helping people is not to assume anything
For some strange reason you assumed that he has chip/programmer fail.
Quote
I've even told him that's what the DELL flashing utility is doing
The fact that utility don't program any data in that area doesn't mean that there shouldn't be any data present. In fact, very often blank area in the ROM file is where data in the flash is kept untouched during programming. In fact, even my ASUS desktop motherboard have data in it which is not present in update .cap file and is preserved during programming.
Quote
why I did not assume he did use the "verify" option which is available in some software so that the user can untick it in order not to waste time.
In programmer software it is ticked by default in most cases. And time saving by unticking it is comparably small, usually programming takes a lot more time than reading.
« Last Edit: November 10, 2015, 05:22:55 pm by wraper »
 

Offline FolxsTopic starter

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Re: Dell Vostro 470 - need BIOS file to reprogram BIOS chip
« Reply #35 on: November 10, 2015, 05:35:41 pm »
Chip is fine - verification after flashing passes trough. Now i haven't acces to file after flashing - I'll post that file on thursday
 

Offline FolxsTopic starter

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Re: Dell Vostro 470 - need BIOS file to reprogram BIOS chip
« Reply #36 on: November 12, 2015, 11:26:01 am »
Ok, here You are: http://speedy.sh/ZGtpX/Dell-Vostro-470-after-flashing-with-2-6mb-BIOS-file.bin
This is what's inside chip after I flash it with 2.6MB BIOS file from dell site
 

Offline grudzik

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Re: Dell Vostro 470 - need BIOS file to reprogram BIOS chip
« Reply #37 on: November 18, 2015, 08:37:51 pm »
bump
 


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