Bios chip

[alwaysbless]

Does anyone have a picture of where the bios is on the mainboard or the name of chip that is used. I have a soic clip Ive used in the past to dump macbook bioses and I would love to see if I can obtain the img file directly from the chip itself. Thx

[no_spam_for_me]

Maybe you can identify it at

http://www.freaktab.com/showthread.php?22350-Teardown-Video-For-MINIX-NEO-Z64-Teardown-Video-From-GeekBuying

????

[alwaysbless]

Thx for the response, that video almost works there just isnt enough detail. I need a high res pic so I can start googling part #s to see which is the bios chip or Ill just have to take it apart myself later and get some close ups when im done screwing with this x7

[cappybob]

Dumb boy question here. The Intel chip uses an eeprom? I can understand this, but does it lock the system to a "only what "I" allow OSes". I can see good with a possible standardizations, and the bad with chip company's owning your electronics forever.

--cappybob

[alwaysbless]

Dumb boy question here. The Intel chip uses an eeprom? I can understand this, but does it lock the system to a "only what "I" allow OSes". I can see good with a possible standardizations, and the bad with chip company's owning your electronics forever.

--cappybob

The bios itself dictates which OS can be installed. So android has its own bios and windows has its own. The issue with the windows bios is that its only 32bit so that prevents certain os's from being installed due to them being 64bit only.

[Weaxle78]

Z64A BIOS

I have extracted the bios using the efi shell.

I Have used the following efi executable: AfuEfix64.zip copied on an UEFI Windows 10 Boot USB.

And was wondering if someone could provide me with a Z64W (Windows version) BIOS

The Z64A (Android version) BIOS : current.zip


Step by step guide:

1. Boot into the BIOS (Press Del)
2. Go to Save & Exit > Boot Override > UEFI: Build-in EFI Shell
3. You are now in the EFi Shell
4. At the prompt Shell> type: fs1:
5. Navigate to the folder you extracted the AfuEfix64.efi executable.
6. Type: AfuEfix64.efi current.bin /O this will dump the bios in current.bin.

And hopefully if users restore the bios of the Z64W on a Z64A it will allow them to install Windows 8.1 or Windows 10.

I do not know if the Z64W is using the 64-bit version of the efi shell if not you could get an error message telling you that the AfuEfix64 is not supported.

if that is the case please tell mee and I will provide a 32-bit version (AfuEfix32.efi)

Thanks in Advanced

[Cathode]

Looks like you've made a backup of only a part of the bios.
There has to be Winbond W25_32 chip on the board near the CPU, this is 32M-bit EEPROM. Full dump should be 4 194 304 bytes.

Try to make a backup using bootable flash and Intel FPT tool:
fpt -d bios.rom -BIOS

FPT can be downloaded here:

http://msi-forum.de/index.php?page=Thread&threadID=103340

[alwaysbless]

Looks like you've made a backup of only a part of the bios.
There has to be Winbond W25_32 chip on the board near the CPU, this is 32M-bit EEPROM. Full dump should be 4 194 304 bytes.

Try to make a backup using bootable flash and Intel FPT tool:
fpt -d bios.rom -BIOS

FPT can be downloaded here:

http://msi-forum.de/index.php?page=Thread&threadID=103340

Exactly what I was looking for thx for the headsup. Ill need to find a pinout for this and then hopefully i can get my bus pirate and a linux vm setup to dump

[alwaysbless]

I found this pinout

http://htmlimg2.alldatasheet.com/htmldatasheet/207471/WINBOND/W25X32/1489/5/W25X32.png

The name of the chip looks diff though W25_32 vs W25X32 - Not sure if this will make a diff but will be giving this a try later

[Weaxle78]

Tried fpt tool

Downloaded the latest tool form the thread mentioned above.

this is the output so no luck using the fpt tool

[Cathode]

By typing W25_32 i meant any letter instead of "_" (Q, D, X). It doesn't matter. Total capacity is the same.
Damn, Z3735F platform doesn't include Intel Management Engine, that is needed to run FPT.
Looks like the only way is to read the eeprom content using any SPI reader.

[alwaysbless]

Got everything wired up and setting up the vm now to have at it. Will let you guys know how things work out

[alwaysbless]

No luck so far, flashrom sees the bios chip but i must have something off as its throwing out the error 'Found generic flash chip "unknown SPI Chip (RDID)" This flash part has status NOT WORKING for operations: PROBE READ ERASE WRITE

The bios chip for the android version im trying to dump is actually a Winbond 25Q64fwsig and I cannot find a pinout on it but i found on the newer variant the fvsig and it reads as below

CS <=======> CS
GND <=======> GND
CLK <=======> CLK
3V3 <=======> VCC
MOSI <=======> DI
MISO <=======> DO

if anyone would like to chime in and save me the time of fidangling with all of this im gonna have a beer

Update: theres something thats just not right here, I know i got everything connected correctly, ive updated the fw on my bp and tried in both windows and linux and flashrom just cant recognize this thing

[Cathode]

In my previous message i've inserted link in "SPI reader" where you can buy cheap as hell programmer and read everything you need without any problems.

[alwaysbless]

In my previous message i've inserted link in "SPI reader" where you can buy cheap as hell programmer and read everything you need without any problems.

If the buspirate cant read from it im doubting anything else can as this thing can ready almost anything (im super biased btw lol). Im not gonna spend much time with this either as far as purchasing other hardware but if someone else has another reader they wanna try that would help as far as seeing of this thing is just unreadable or if maybe its just the bp not being compatible.