For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding.Note: remove and replace the chip (requires skill to desolder and solder plus a fine-tipped soldering iron or a hot-air station).
This site uses cookies to help personalise content, tailor your experience and to keep you logged in if you register. By continuing to use this site, you are consenting to our use of cookies. Flash The Eeprom Chip On My Lenovo Thinkpad T470S Series Of VoltageI went with the FTDI over a series of voltage dividers because I wanted to attempt to program the chip while it was on the board, and the SPI current using voltage dividers would have been too low (I didnt have any digital buffers on hand). Powering it on resulted only in a pure black screen where after approximately fifteen seconds it flashed Lenovo Misto Ontario, and then nothing. Ive had this little Lenovo S205 netbook for a few years and although its gotten slower its always served me well. And since it was working perfectly fine up until it er, wasnt it seemed like a waste to just throw it out without trying my best to fix it. The solution was to reflash the BIOS chip with a replacement BIOS I found online, using an open source program called flashrom and an Arduino acting as an SPI flash programmer. The chip in question is located directly underneath the laptops keyboard and accessible by moving a small plastic flap out of the way (held in place with electrical tape in the above photo). It uses a serial peripheral interface (SPI) for communication and has a capacity of 16,777,216 bits (2,097,152 bytes, or 2 mebibytes (MiB) for short). On board are all of the instructions for the computers BIOS. So before going any further, I needed to find a clean version of the laptops BIOS to flash to the chip. This comes as a Windows executable labeled 4BCN24WW.exe, and is intended to be run in a Windows environment on the S205 laptop. The program will automatically check that its on the proper machine and then rewrite the BIOS while the PC is still running. Since the laptop is bricked I cant use that process, but I can extract the BIOS file from the executable. Before it errored however, it extracted its contents to the following folder in preparation to run. It is designed to flash BIOSEFIcorebootfirmwareoptionROM images on mainboards, networkgraphicsstorage controller cards, and various other programmer devices. The universe repository is enabled by default for installations, but not when using a live-USB. After adding the universe repository I also needed to update the package list. Then I cloned the latest stable release from the flashrom repository and changed directories. Flash The Eeprom Chip On My Lenovo Thinkpad T470S Code For TheThis means connecting a device that speaks SPI directly to the pins on the flash memory chip that holds the code for the BIOS. ![]() The ATmega328P chip at the heart of the Nano runs some custom firmware, built by the flashrom community, that translates the serial instructions sent by the host PC into SPI flash instructions for writing to the memory chip. Im using a Nano instead of an Uno (which also uses the 328P) just because its easier to breadboard. This is necessary because the flash memory chip on the laptop normally runs at 3.3V and is not 5V tolerant. By using the FTDI as a pass-through, the Nano runs at 3.3V and has 3.3V outputs that play nicely with the flash memory. This is a spring-loaded adapter that connects directly to the fingers on the chip and makes solid connections without any soldering. If I didnt have all of the other hardware on hand, I would have just picked up an FT232H breakout and been done with it.
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