Am Sonntag, 2. Dezember 2007 05:48:23 schrieb Peter Stuge:
On Sat, Dec 01, 2007 at 07:46:14PM -0500, Richard Smith wrote:
CS# from the IT8716F is routed up to R509 which is a zero ohm resistor. If this resistor is in place then CS is hardwired to CS# on U5 which is the SPI chip that's loaded. If you pull R509 then the CS# to both chips are free to be selected by (unloaded) Q2,Q43,Q4, and Q5 + resistors but I don't have the configuration mapped out.
They would be part of Gigabyte's patented hardware BIOS failover technology I suppose.
Q4-3 and Q5-3 are both connected to the superio side of R509, so the emitter if using PNP transistors.
Traces from Q4-1 and Q5-1 both run toward the flash chips so they would be the collector.
Q4-2 and Q5-2 the base, with R91 before Q4 and R90 before Q5. The other side of R91 goes to R389 which then goes to Q43-2. The other side of R90 goes to R86 which then goes to Q2-2. There are some vias on the traces between R{90,91} and Q{4,5} so they are connected to something else as well. (But what?) There are also vias on traces between R{86,389} and Q{2,43}.
Q43 and Q4 are driven at the same time, through R389 and R91 respectively. I wonder what the purpose of Q43 and Q2 is.
The pinout does indeed match e.g. a BC847 PNP transistor in SOT23 package.
R89 is between Q4-1 (U5-CS#?) and a power net, so would be the pull-up for when Q4 is not driven to select U5.
There is certainly a corresponding resistor for Q5-1 but there's only a via from the Q5-1 trace so it would have to be tested. My guess is R130 (directly south of R129) since it's other end goes to U9-CS#.
It does not look like there is any easy way to re-enable switching between the SPI chips since you have to load several missing parts.
The switch mod can be simplified to use existing pads and no pins have to be lifted from the flash chips anymore.
- Remove R509.
- Populate R89 and R130 with 10k or 100k pull-up 0402 resistors.
- Solder the switch common to Q4-3 and switch between Q4-1 and Q5-1.
Confirmed. But not with SMD Resistors.
First I removed the R509. As there are connections from R89 Left to U5 VCC; from R89 Right to U9 CS#; from R130 Left to U5 CS# and from R130 Right to U9 VCC I soldered normal 100k resistors between U5 VCC and U9 CS# and between U5 CS# and U9 VCC.
Here are two photos of my new mod: http://img141.imageshack.us/img141/8866/dscf1791ob2.jpg http://img104.imageshack.us/img104/2579/dscf1792nn2.jpg
I know, that these cables to the sockel are not really fine, but i had no other solution for mounting the sockel on the mainboard and it works fine!
I added a sockel for the SPI-chips to be able to change the bios chip in an easy way. If someone is interested which sockels these are, they are manufactured by WELLS-CTI and have the part number 652C0082211-W003. I payed about 8€ per part, and that sould be about 10$, without shipping costs. The distributer for these sockels was http://www.bfioptilas.com/.
(PS: thanks to Mr. A. v. Heydwolff for organising these sockels.)
Of course this assumes that soldering 0402 resistors is considered simple, which isn't likely true unless you're good at SMT soldering.
A friend of mine helped me with the soldering, but he said that it is nearly impossible to solder these resistors without industry-equipment.
I'll probably just end up soldering on a 2nd chip and then wiring the CS# pins up to a switch like the other mods did.
Of course there could be some timer thingy to do failover, but I think manual control is best. I think the spring-loaded switch is as useful as any mechanism in this case.
//Peter