robinlecouteur

A method I used on a bricked bios was directly connecting the bios chip to my raspberry pi and using a program called flashrom to flash it. I soldered wires directly to my chip but you can get clips that do not require soldering.

https://www.flashrom.org/RaspberryPi here's the flashrom link. http://www.win-raid.com/t58f16-Guide-Recover-from-failed-BIOS-flash-using-Raspberry-PI.html tutorial link, I did this without the resistors or capacitor(Ignore the ground that the capacitor was connected to) I checked the bios chip on the y500 schematics and it has the same pinout as the one in the tutorial.

 

Don't know if you still have it, but you can flash the chip directly with a Raspberry Pi using flashrom, https://www.flashrom.org/RaspberryPi. I fixed my completely bricked P170SM-A using this method. 

Fixed it! I flashed the bios chip directly with flashrom on my Raspberry Pi 2 model B. https://www.flashrom.org/Flashrom. @Prema have you used this? I just looked at the motherboard schematics to find the bios chip model, then google the pinout for the chip. I soldered wires onto my chip and connected them to specific pins on the gpio of the rpi, then flashrom detected the chip and I could flash it. Typing this on my now unbricked P170SM-A!

This method works with some of the older model RPi's so it is a cheap method to unbrick a laptop with a corrupt bios.

 

Cheers,

 

Robin

 

Hi, I modded my bios for the microcode hack to be able to oc my i7 4710mq in my P170SM-A. Here' the link to the site that shows how to mod http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/4ghz-overclock-i7-4xxxxmq-h-to-i7-extreme-conversion-intel-haswell-cpu-microcode-bug-hack.790177/

 The instructions do not mention adding the old version microcode back into the bios, so i didn't, but I have a feeling i should have. my laptop now has a black screen and reboots every minute continually. If I put a usb with a rom of the bios that prema put in another post for the fn b method, and I hold fn b, my usb's lights flash and the hdd light on the laptop flashes 3 times in a row quicky  every few seconds then the flashing stops and the laptop gets stuck in the blackscreen reboot loop again. 

What should I do? I need this laptop for my study that starts in a week.

 

The bios it was running before the issues is this. Image https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B7QJ1eF_RQN8NnJJdjVDQnVpLTZobkpucFJOVl9LSUxveXZv/view?usp=sharing

Rom file https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B7QJ1eF_RQN8MEZhYmVJQzlnWlU/view?usp=sharing

 

And the modded one https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B7QJ1eF_RQN8SmhsZHJ5TWpGMzA/view?usp=sharing

If it can be fixed, I'll happily donate

 

If soft fixes don't work, what options are there with flashing the bios chip directly?

 

Thanks

 

Robin

https://www.techpowerup.com/vgabios/?architecture=&manufacturer=&model=HD+8970M&interface=&memType=&memSize=&since=

This is where you get the vbioses, if it is not already flashed.

 

https://www.techpowerup.com/vgabios/?architecture=&manufacturer=&model=HD+8970M&interface=&memType=&memSize=&since=

Try this site, these are stock vbioses. Just match the memory quantity and brand to the vbios and flash it with atiflash here https://www.techpowerup.com/download/ati-atiflash/. That fixes the no vbios issue, don't know about the laptop's bios though.

Also the 7970, 8970, and R9 M290x are the exact same card. just slight overclocks and vram increases on the later ones by default. I think the 7970 and the 8970 are a bit different that the 8970 has enduro/graphics switching capability added, but the R9 M290x actually shows as an 8970m in gpuz etc. Same with the gtx 680m, 780m, and 880m. can save a bit of cash by getting the older gens and clocking them the same as the 'newer' ones for the exact same performance.

I have an 8970m that failed recently. Doing the oven trick to reflow the solder worked and the card runs properly now. Artifacts on the screen can mean a bad connection sometimes.

Cheers