Pipo X7 won't start up anymore

[CRi]

People please! Desoldering chips and such??? I think we have lost sight of the OP.... The real issue is that we have a product that is obviously flawed in design since its end user can easily (and accidentally) render the unit worthless.... Safeguards should be in place to prevent this bullshit. If that's why the Beelink unit costs a bit more, then I'll pay a bit more...

PIPO: I better get my money back for this piece of junk.... Did you really think that the hacker community wasn't going to latch onto this product? The one community that would be most likely to encounter this situation??? Perhaps you should be spending more on R&D and QCA rather than trying to rush unfinished and incomplete product out the door....

I don't agree with you on that. I don't know many brands (if any) that supports you in hacking their hardware... especially some cheap chinese company.
Pipo provides you a working hardware, you can't ask them to support support all modifications you might do to your box.

You want to hack your hardware, then you have to deal with that and learn to modify it without breaking it and/or plan for a recovery plan BEFORE you try something that might break it. That's why we need a way of dumping/restoring the BIOS, so that we can experiment with the settings and revert to working condition if something goes wrong.

The other option is that you buy a more finished product with a specific bios (not a generic one that fits many similar tablets / nettop). The manufacturer will have done more work to provide you this, so it'll be twice or three times the price

[sikke]

You do not need any professional welding device. Just a plain US $10 soldering iron is enough. You can even do it by yourself. You do not need excessive skills, just patience.

Strip a CAT5e cable and untwist it. Get a wire about 50cm long and strip the insulation about 5cm.

Use some appropriate surface to work. Cut a small piece of soldering wire with your hot soldering iron, keep it in touch with the tip of the soldering iron to form a large melted solder drop, and dip the end of the wire in the melted solder until it forms a relative small ball, slightly larger than the thickness of the cable. If the ball gets larger than expected, shake the wire to let it drop off. After a few trials, you will have a wire that has a tiny amount of solder on its tip. Put that wire over the centre of the chip pin, apply a small pressure, hold it with one hand steadily in place, and touch it with your soldering iron about 1cm or even more above of the chip pin. Do not apply any solder to the soldering iron and do not touch the chip pin. The heat will transfer to the end of the wire, melt the tiny amount of solder, and the wire will get soldered to the pin. This way, you cannot harm the chip pins.

After that, you have to insulate the stripped end of the wire. Strip the other end of the wire for about 5cm to 10cm, use a hair dryer to slightly warm the insulation across the wire, hold the free end with one hand and push the insulation to move across the wire until it reaches the other end.

Do that 8 times, and you are ready to go. It should not take you more than half an hour, and it just requires patience, not excessive skills.

Very very good soldering tip.

In 4pda.ru was some info how to make the eprom programmer 3.3v ---> 1.8volts for teclast x98 air 3g rescue.
Need to find it again.

[bdusmc]

I don't agree with you on that. I don't know many brands (if any) that supports you in hacking their hardware... especially some cheap chinese company.
Pipo provides you a working hardware, you can't ask them to support support all modifications you might do to your box.

Dude, I changed a couple of BIOS settings... give your head a shake.

The manufacturer will have done more work to provide you this, so it'll be twice or three times the price

Thank you for taking in and regurgitating my entire post in different words.

Sent from my GT-I9505G using Tapatalk

[zollymonsta]

Dude, I changed a couple of BIOS settings... give your head a shake.



Thank you for taking in and regurgitating my entire post in different words.

Sent from my GT-I9505G using Tapatalk

Hi, new user here. I came across this thread when I started having the same problem.

I fully back you up on this. I simply changed the Power settings in my BIOS to have the PIPO X7 return to power on state after power loss. Since then the unit won't boot, let alone display a red power light.

A chat with 'Anna' from PIPO resulted in being told 'The BIOS cannot be changed' which if this is the case there is a fundamental flaw in this product. If they can't allows you to change the BIOS settings then they should disable access, disable the 'Save settings and exit' option or pull th device from market and fix this flaw.

'Anna' told me I would have to reflash the bios and was supposedly sending me an email with files and info. She has sent email twice now and I have received nothing.

My next step is to insist on a replacement from the seller (Gear Best) or dispute with PayPal and get a refund.

For such a promising product, it has been such a a disappointment.

Cheers,
Grant

[loko]

I believe that you cannot request a replacement if you fiddled with the BIOS. If you buy a smartphone and fiddle with the bootloader, you are not covered by the warranty. Most of the times, you are not even supposed to root the device. This is considered normal. You are not supposed to fiddle with a smartphone's bootloader. You are not supposed to fiddle with an Android TV box's bootloader. So, you are not supposed to fiddle with PiPo X7's BIOS. This device is not meant to be a full PC. Think of it as a tablet or a media player. You just get what you get, no questions asked.

Anyway, almost all these Bay Trail devices get bricked by BIOS setting changes. That leaves you with two options. If you are tech savvy enough, dump the BIOS with a programmer, do whatever you want, and in the case you brick the device, restore it back to life by reprogramming the BIOS. If you cannot do that, simply do not touch the BIOS.

I am still waiting for my PiPo X7, and when I will get it, I will try to reverse engineer the BIOS and heavily modify it. I am quite positive about this, and in the case I will brick it permanently, I will have to live with my options.

[alwaysbless]

Cant fiddle with the bios on a windows pc? sounds like a load of crap and a scapegoat for them to not have to deal with this on a deeper level. I personally am not affected by this but if it is in fact true that the bios cannot be altered it should be pipos responsibility to replace the units of all the people they didnt warn or their resellers are gonna have to deal with this mess for them.

[zollymonsta]

PiPo BIOS Image File

Anna sent me the BIOS image again.

Looks like it has to be run on the PiPO itself though.. which isn't possible in my case since it wont even power up. Unless I am missing something.

X7_JS_PIPO_LOGO_20150104_20150105.zip

Hopefully this is of use to someone?

[no_spam_for_me]

I'm also thinking BIOS and bootloader are two different things... If an BIOS exists, especially with the option to change the settings (which doesn't exists at a bootloader), you should be able to:
1. change the settings without brick your device
2. have a way to reset it
(((3. at best case in worst case reflash it)))

[bdusmc]

Anna sent me the BIOS image again.

Looks like it has to be run on the PiPO itself though.. which isn't possible in my case since it wont even power up. Unless I am missing something.

[ATTACH]10666[/ATTACH]

Hopefully this is of use to someone?

What were her instructions?

Sent from my GT-I9505G using Tapatalk

[loko]

Instructions?

You just run FLASHWin32.BAT to upgrade the BIOS.

If your device is bricked and you cannot get into Windows, this pack is completely useless.

[bdusmc]

Instructions?

You just run FLASHWin32.BAT to upgrade the BIOS.

If your device is bricked and you cannot get into Windows, this pack is completely useless.

So what's the EFI file for then?

My question was actually directed at Zollymonsta, since he posted the file, and he also said that Anna talked about including instructions, presumably for somebody in his situation...

Regardless, thanks for the um... input.


Sent from my GT-I9505G using Tapatalk

[loko]

This is a regular BIOS update package that can be used either from the EFI shell or the Windows Command Line shell.

It is obvious that it cannot magically unbrick a device, especially in the case the device does not post at all, and it makes me wonder if all these representatives can even understand what they are asked for.

[zollymonsta]

So what's the EFI file for then?

My question was actually directed at Zollymonsta, since he posted the file, and he also said that Anna talked about including instructions, presumably for somebody in his situation...

Regardless, thanks for the um... input.


Sent from my GT-I9505G using Tapatalk

As soon as I saw the files I realised they were pointless. Merely posted here in case someone finds them useful. I asked Anna how this was supposed to fix my device.. Didn't get an answer, still waiting... And 'Anna' seems to be offline all the time now.

So, yeah.. Bricked device, these files are useless.

The supplier is non responsive also. So will be raising with PayPal soon.

[Frontier]

Anna Ye replied (after 10 days):

Dear Friend,

Our technicians told me you can send it back to China to repair.

There is no way to flash the BIOS again.

[zollymonsta]

Anna Ye replied (after 10 days):

Funny. I just got the exact same email.
Doesnt matter, sent mine back to GearBest today. Sounds like they will replace it with another.