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Z800 version 003 extracted BIOS image

Started by Andy Brown, January 28, 2015, 01:39:34 pm

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Andy Brown

A few people have asked me if I was willing to extract the BIOS image from my Z800 revision 003 motherboard, the idea being that the image would contain the important bootblock that permits flawless booting from the Westmere X56xx series of hex-core Xeon's.

After doing a bit of research it became clear that BIOS images are mapped into physical memory with the location being dependent on the chipset and the size dependent on the SPI flash device that holds the BIOS image.

Fortunately a very useful utility exists for linux, called flashrom. I ran that on a physical installation of Ubuntu (it won't work properly in a VM) and it seemed to extract an image. Here's the log:


ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo flashrom -p internal -r bios.bin
flashrom v0.9.6.1-r1563 on Linux 3.13.0-32-generic (i686)
flashrom is free software, get the source code at http://www.flashrom.org

Calibrating delay loop... OK.
Found chipset "Intel ICH10R". Enabling flash write... WARNING: Setting 0xdc from 0x2 to 0x3 on ICH10R failed. New value is 0x2.
WARNING: SPI Configuration Lockdown activated.
PR0: WARNING: 0x001f0000-0x001fffff is read-only.
Please send a verbose log to flashrom@flashrom.org if this board is not listed on
http://flashrom.org/Supported_hardware#Supported_mainboards yet.
Writes have been disabled. You can enforce write support with the
ich_spi_force programmer option, but it will most likely harm your hardware!
If you force flashrom you will get no support if something breaks.
PROBLEMS, continuing anyway
Found SST flash chip "SST25VF016B" (2048 kB, SPI) at physical address 0xffe00000.
Reading flash... done.


The 2Mb BIOS image is attached to this post. I hope someone can make use of it and would really like to hear any experiences.
It's worse than that, it's physics Jim!

digitaltrousers

Hi Andy. Thanks for that. A nice find!
I got my board today. I noticed an interesting area on the board (pic attached). If you're up for an experiment, you could try removing the green jumper in the picture and try re-running the same flashrom command. I'd be interested to see if it still complains about writing being disabled. (PSWD = Pin header Spi Write Disable?? Especially given the nearby silkscreen text, "SPI Recovery Header.")
If my suspicions are correct and this disables write protection, It'd be interesting to see whether doing this allows the HP BIOS update to update the bootblock. That would make the whole process pretty easy!
Cheers,
Dan.

Andy Brown

Hi Dan,

Sorry to disappoint but E49 clears the BIOS password. I did however get my 002 board out of storage and have a poke around with my multimeter; the results of which are now posted in the main article.
It's worse than that, it's physics Jim!

nemorus

Hello. And if you unsolder pin 3 WP . And try to reflash without 3 pin WP? Tried anyone?

429076

June 20, 2017, 01:57:10 am #4 Last Edit: June 20, 2017, 03:31:07 am by Andy Brown
Hi everyone. I've tried this image and it works. Thanks for the image.
I've started with z800 rev 002 stock BIOS chip, not working with 56xx processors. Tried to flash it in place (without any soldering). And I've got interesting result - I am able to erase the chip, but can't write new image to it.
So the BIOS was spoiled and I proceeded with the long way. I've unsoldered the chip and tried to flash it separately, but it was still read only (or maybe I've had some issues with my programmer). I've had some new spare chips, and flashed the image to new one without any errors. And now motherboard boots with 56xx processors, and has new boot block.

mtothaj

Quote from: 429076 on June 20, 2017, 01:57:10 am
Hi everyone. I've tried this image and it works. Thanks for the image.
I've started with z800 rev 002 stock BIOS chip, not working with 56xx processors. Tried to flash it in place (without any soldering). And I've got interesting result - I am able to erase the chip, but can't write new image to it.
So the BIOS was spoiled and I proceeded with the long way. I've unsoldered the chip and tried to flash it separately, but it was still read only (or maybe I've had some issues with my programmer). I've had some new spare chips, and flashed the image to new one without any errors. And now motherboard boots with 56xx processors, and has new boot block.


Congratulations on a succesfull boot block upgrade.
it is also my understanding / experience that certain regions of the stock bios HP bios chips have write protect enabled at the bios chip level during the course of the original factory programming. Thus, even with an unlocked descriptor and the relevant jumpers on the board in place attempting to write to the stock HP bios chip usally throws up an error at c.a. 25-30% progress bricking the machine in he proces. For this reason replacing the bios chip is the only viable option I am aware off to change the bootblock.

Animajosser

Hello, I am new to this forum and I have just used the bios image Mr. Brown uploaded and It seems to work. A more complete description of my problem is posted here: https://forums.anandtech.com/threads/custom-dual-xeon-build-restarting-needed-a-couple-of-times-to-finally-start-up.2543896/#post-39394527 . I bought 2 Xeon X5650 cpu's a while ago and a Z800 rev. 002 to use them in, as described on Mr. Browns blog. I found out that starting up didn't go as smoothly and after a long time I read on this forum and the comments that it had to do with the software on the bios chip. So I bought a CH341A bios programmer and five SST 25VF016B IC's on Aliexpress and flashed the new bios chip with the software posted in this thread. I used a tool from this page: https://tosiek.pl/ch341-eeprom-and-spi-flash-programmer/ and I installed the drivers with Snappy Driver Installer. Something I noted was that the software says wrongfully how to place the chip in the programmer. The notch of the chip needs to be turned 180 degrees, otherwise it won't work in this case. To conclude, I unsoldered the old bios chip as insurance and soldered in the new one in and it seems to work, as it hasn't done anything weird in 5-10 boot ups. It needs more testing of course and I'm rendering a difficult 3D-scene right now to stress test it (as I don't want the new bios to cause instability or something). This is no hardware mod, as it is wrongfully called, but a software mod. I had to replace the bios, because it was difficult to flash it with the motherboard, but the only thing I changed is some software on the bios chip.

fabs

Hi Animajosser, Impressive, i am trying the same thing on my z800 bord with a corrupt bios after i changed by mistake NUMA settings, basically unsolder the onboard bios chip , and replace with an after market SST25VF016B-50-4C-S2AF chip, reprogramed with the CH341A of aliexpress and Andy's Bios Image , then re-solder onboard. but for some reason impossible to rewirte the chip, i tried the trick of connecting differently to the CH341A (180 degree rotation for pins) to read and write but i always comme accross "operation timed out" error messages and i m stuck. any idea ?

Animajosser

Hi fabs,

I don't recognize the error message, but it looks like a connection error: drivers, broken chip, broken bios programmer or bad connection. Can you read the contents of the bios chip?

mate_1974

Hi,

I have Z800 V2 board and currently running 2x E5649 prosessors.
Eevery time, it starts ok.

But when you reboot it, sometimes it hangs and fans start to blow full speed

I would love to change chip which give me never bootblock. Is anyone selling those?
I am ok, if mac address change.