[coreboot] Hosed ms-7032, I foolishly flashed the bios with a .700

Phil Neary philneary at yahoo.co.uk
Thu Jun 11 14:08:39 CEST 2009


Thanks for the reply, I used Flashrom as the utility and am quite comfortable using Linux and the command line. I got shot of my virally infected copy of Win98 sometime ago, I have my hard drive with Fedora 9 on my friends PC, it has the Flashrom utility and my backup.bin. It also has the same type of bios chip (PLCC), And its socketed!

My bios chip is a PLCC (not socketed unfortunately) and the info on the chip is;

Winbond W39V040AP
        240515401
        415GGAA 

I've thought about unsoldering the chip but don't really have the proper tools. I could do it though, it will take ages because I'll have to take it real slow so and find something to use to take the heat away from the chip so I don't fry it, but I'm very patient and I think could do it (getting it back on might be a bit more problematic). 

My thought was to purchase another chip and 'kind of' place it on top of the other chip, but I'm not sure how this would go? I'd hope it would be a little like hot flashing, and the good chip would be recognized by the CPU and I could boot-up. It would then be a case of removing the new chip (making sure the bios is set to cashable first) and refashing with my backup.bin. But I don't know the 'bad' chip could interfere with it booting and cause it not to work. Another thought is this computer has something in the bios about 'booting' 'rom' and 'lan' I haven't fully looked into it yet, but if its what I think it is, its something to do with booting over a network, is it possible to do this with a CPU that has no bios?

I'm open and confident in trying all suggestions, and I love to learn.

Thank you


--- On Thu, 11/6/09, Carl-Daniel Hailfinger <c-d.hailfinger.devel.2006 at gmx.net> wrote:

> From: Carl-Daniel Hailfinger <c-d.hailfinger.devel.2006 at gmx.net>
> Subject: Re: [coreboot] Hosed ms-7032, I foolishly flashed the bios with a .700
> To: "Phil Neary" <philneary at yahoo.co.uk>
> Cc: coreboot at coreboot.org
> Date: Thursday, 11 June, 2009, 10:20 AM
> Hi Phil,
> 
> On 11.06.2009 11:49, Phil Neary wrote:
> > Hi all, I'm not really sure how this works, I'm
> guessing its a bit similar to a forum, but in lieu of
> creating threads and posting posts, you email instead?
> >   
> 
> Correct. Please make sure to use the "reply to all" button
> in your
> mailer. That will ensure the individual developers and the
> list see your
> mails.
> 
> 
> > [...] I messed up when flashing my bios and flashed it
> with A7032VMS.700 instead of a .rom or a .bin.
> >   
> 
> Which application did you use for reflashing? In theory,
> the
> A7032VMS.700 may just be a renamed .bin file.
> 
> 
> > [...] I tried the AMIBOOT.ROM recovery with the .700
> and a few other bios' for my board [...], but they haven't
> worked.[...] I was able to get the backup.bin from my hard
> drive
> 
> Actually, the backup.bin may be key to reviving your
> board.
> 
> 
> > and tried renaming it AMIBOOT.ROM and saving it to
> floppy, but Fedora named it amiboot.rom[...]. Does Amiboot
> have to be capitalized?
> >   
> 
> AFAIK DOS doesn't care about name capitalization.
> 
> 
> > Is there anything I haven't tried yet?
> >   
> 
> It all depends on how adventurous you feel.
> Can you try to locate the ROM chip on your board and peel
> off the
> sticker? It might look similar to this:
> http://www.coreboot.org/File:Plcc32_chip.jpg and it is
> probably in a
> socket. Write down all text you see on the chip (not the
> sticker) and
> mail it to us. Then we can tell you which chips are
> compatible and how
> to recover.
> One way to recover is to hotflash the chip in another board
> with
> compatible flash bus (sounds complicated, but once we know
> the chip
> model, we can tell you which boards are compatible). That
> would save you
> the hassle of buying a new chip.
> 
> 
> > I can get a replacement chip for a fiver, but before I
> do I'd like to find out if that will defiantly work?
> 
> It should work, but it's not guaranteed. Ah yes, and there
> is the risk
> that your onboard network won't work anymore if you buy a
> preflashed
> chip because sometimes the old chip stores the MAC address
> of your
> onboard network card.
> 
> How experienced are you with Linux or *BSD? Our emergency
> recovery tools
> don't work under Windows (well, very old versions of our
> tools work
> under Windows).
> 
> Regards,
> Carl-Daniel
> 
> -- 
> http://www.hailfinger.org/
> 
> 


      




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