Hi. Greetings from Argentina. My english is not so good so I hope you can understand me. I have a chinese tablet pc netbook with Atom N450 - Intel NM10 Chipset. Being the most stupid guy in the world, I've found an updated bios in a forum and downloaded it. Tablet was running Ubuntu linux. I've flashed it with flashrom 0.9.3 without reading a thing about that notebooks and netbooks are not compatible because of the embedded controller. Flashing went OK. Flash memory detected OK, erased and programmed. After reset. . . Dead netbook After powering cycle, power light turns on, but no video. No boot block access, nothing. I have electronics skills, so I've taken it apart, and found that the motherboard has two identical flash chips, EON 25F80. I've desoldered both chips, read both with an external programmer to see what was on them, first chip had the original AMI bios, that was on the netbook prior to flashing. The second one has the new ami bios I've flashed and bricked. I've programmed the second chip with the original BIOS dump I've made before update, soldered it again and nothing happened. Board is dead. I'm little lost about the two flash scenario. When first chip is removed, board does not even power up, so I think it might be the embedded controller bios, but it's a complete ami bios?. Any help, thoughts you could give me would be of great help
Thanks a lot
German
Am Montag, den 17.01.2011, 18:43 -0300 schrieb Germán Rotondo:
Flashing went OK. Flash memory detected OK, erased and programmed. After reset. . . Dead netbook
I have electronics skills, so I've taken it apart, and found that the motherboard has two identicalflash chips, EON 25F80. I've desoldered both chips, read both with an external programmer to see what was on them, first chip had the original AMI bios, that was on the netbook prior to flashing. The second one has the new ami bios I've flashed and bricked.
You did not happen to make a backup of "the" flashchip using flashrom before you wrote the new BIOS? It might be that the chip detected by flashrom is not used for system BIOS storage but contains some extended code for the EC or even some cryptography/authorization stuff. If killing one of the chips is enough, it does not really look like it is a standard Dual BIOS setup.
When first chip is removed, board does not even power up, so I think it might be the embedded controller bios, but it's a complete ami bios?.
It is imaginable that the netbook designers first tried to implement shared flash but gave up for some reason and just doubled the flash chip. In that case, of one chip, only the EC code and of the other chip, only the non-EC code would be used. But that doesn't make sense with your observation that it doesn't work after cloning the "old" BIOS.
Any help, thoughts you could give me would be of great help
Regards, Michael Karcher
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Germán Rotondo -
Michael Karcher