Programming BIOS chip
Posted: Wed Jun 05, 2019 5:43 pm
Hi,
a friend of mine got his hands on a brand new T60. The very first thing he did was that he tried to flash the BIOS. Well, after restarting it didn't turn back on, so obviously he screwed up the flash process. He sent it to me so I can give my best try on fixing it (I have fixed tons of laptops before). Well, I didn't expect that ThinkPads doesn't have blind flash option. So - I tried to disassemble the whole computer to do manual feed to the chip. That needs to have power supply connected since the programmer doesn't have enough umph to backfeed almost the whole board so without the adapter it threw my programmer into overcurrent protection. Sadly, the programming clamp had slipped while trying to read and shorted the chip out. Removal from the board and reading attempts had proven that the chip released the magic smoke and went to silicon heaven. Nothing is lost I thought - the chip is off the shelf, so I will buy another one, feed it and solder it back on the board.
Wrong.
I managed to convert the FL1 file through e_bcpvpw to WPH file which seems to be the binary code needed. But it has one fatal flaw. It has 2055kB, 7kB more than what can fit into the chip which is 2048kB in size. It even doesn't fit the programmers buffer. I can program it into the chip but everything in excess just doesn't get programmed and it is clipped of as expected. What should I do now? I truly don't have any clue what I should do to fix it. The laptop is brand new like I said and now it is totally worthless. Thanks for any help.
a friend of mine got his hands on a brand new T60. The very first thing he did was that he tried to flash the BIOS. Well, after restarting it didn't turn back on, so obviously he screwed up the flash process. He sent it to me so I can give my best try on fixing it (I have fixed tons of laptops before). Well, I didn't expect that ThinkPads doesn't have blind flash option. So - I tried to disassemble the whole computer to do manual feed to the chip. That needs to have power supply connected since the programmer doesn't have enough umph to backfeed almost the whole board so without the adapter it threw my programmer into overcurrent protection. Sadly, the programming clamp had slipped while trying to read and shorted the chip out. Removal from the board and reading attempts had proven that the chip released the magic smoke and went to silicon heaven. Nothing is lost I thought - the chip is off the shelf, so I will buy another one, feed it and solder it back on the board.
Wrong.
I managed to convert the FL1 file through e_bcpvpw to WPH file which seems to be the binary code needed. But it has one fatal flaw. It has 2055kB, 7kB more than what can fit into the chip which is 2048kB in size. It even doesn't fit the programmers buffer. I can program it into the chip but everything in excess just doesn't get programmed and it is clipped of as expected. What should I do now? I truly don't have any clue what I should do to fix it. The laptop is brand new like I said and now it is totally worthless. Thanks for any help.
