Fix dead motherboard through SPI Port | Mutant_Tractor™ http://mutant-tractor.com/2010/10/27/flashing-a-dead-mother...

Fixing/Flashing a dead motherboard through SPI Port over Serial

interface

Okay so a little background on why I am writing this article...

Got a Blitz formula today and i thought all was well plugged in the 24pin ATX and EATX power

and all the lights were on (good stuff) Clicked the on button, the LCD was stuck with CPU INIT,

I've tried clearing CMOS everything I don't know what the hell is wrong, currently in the process

of resetting the CMOS (press CLR_CMOS button and take out the battery for 2 hours) The board

is spotless absolutely perfect, and all the lights come on and even when you install the GPU

wrong the little warning light comes on but it will not POST, just says CPU INIT all the time and

restarts every 3/4 seconds as if there was a bad overclock and it was resetting to default, its

defiantly a BIOS issue IMO but any help from those that have experiences like this would be

greatly appreciated!

So that was me when i first got the motherboard, as you can see something was obviously up with it

and as it wouldn't even POST i couldn't flash the BIOS.

So I looked for alternate methods and there was 2 open to me:

De/Re-Solder the BIOS chip with a new one

Work out how to flash using the SPI Port and flash from another computer (or in my case a very
old laptop with an LPT port on it)

So naturally I chose the latter, but the next challenge was to find out how I go about using this SPI
port (which looks very similar to a USB header - pictures below)

You will need:

Dead Motherboard

Spare PSU

Paperclip

Laptop/Desktop with LPT/Serial

100 Ohm Resistors (x4)

An old unused cable with a 2x5 header on one end (http://www.logicsupply.com/images/photos/cables

/ieee1394hdrcab_big.jpg) (usually come free with motherboards)

Universal Boot CD v4.1.1 (Version Important) (http://www.megaupload.com/?d=XNUIN09K)

SPIPGM2 (http://richard-burke.dyndns.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/SPIPGM2.ZIP)

CWSDPMI7 (http://homer.rice.edu/~sandmann/cwsdpmi/csdpmi7b.zip) (Copy contents of /bin folder to the

same directory as SPIPGM2

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Fix dead motherboard through SPI Port | Mutant_Tractor™ http://mutant-tractor.com/2010/10/27/flashing-a-dead-mother...

Cable Wiring Guide (http://www.megaupload.com/?d=1PSVKBEL)

A BIOS ROM for your motherboard (go to your manufacturers website and download the latest)

Basic DOS knowledge

Method:

First things first, you want to download the 3 files (The Boot CD .iso, SPIPGM2 (Used to flash the

ROM), CWSDPMI7 (DPMI host process needed by SPIPGM)).

Burn the Universal Boot to a CD, place both SPIPGM2 and CWSDPMI7's /bin files as well as the BIOS

ROM in the C:\ directory on your laptop/desktop that you will be doing the flashing from.

Butcher up the header cable (i.e. take off the outer sleeving so all you are left with is the header

that will connect to the SPI Port and about 1M of wires (see picture):

Click to Enlarge

(http://mutant-tractor.com/wp-content/upload/2010/10/img6513p1.jpg)

(http://mutant-tractor.com/wp-content/upload/2010/10/img6515q1.jpg)

(http://mutant-tractor.com/wp-content/upload/2010/10/img65161.jpg)

The guide to creating this cable is detailed here (http://www.megaupload.com/?d=1PSVKBEL) , note it is

VERY important to use the 3V line from the spare PSU (to hot-wire the spare PSU use the paperclip

and make a connection between the green wire and ANY black wire) and NOT 2xAA batteries as 2x

AA's will not work (believe me I've tried), also ignore the bootable USB as were using a CD.

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Once you have created the flashing cable then it is time to plug it into the Serial Port on your

chosen flashing computer (Make sure it's mode is set to LPT port as detailed in the pdf, check and

recheck these!)

The ports should be as so:

LPT Port | SPI Port
7 -> 3
8 -> 4
9 -> 6
10 -> 5
18 -> 2
(Resistors need to be on lines 7, 8, 9 and 10)

DB25 (LPT Port Pinout) SPI Port Pinout

(http://mutant-
(http://mutant-tractor.com tractor.com/wp-content
/wp-content/upload /upload/2010/10
/2010/10/db25fem.jpg) /images.jpg)

Mine looked like this:

(http://mutant-tractor.com/wp-content/upload/2010/10/img6527x1.jpg)

(http://mutant-tractor.com/wp-content/upload/2010/10/img6526n1.jpg)

(http://mutant-tractor.com/wp-content/upload/2010/10/img6514r1.jpg)

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Fix dead motherboard through SPI Port | Mutant_Tractor™ http://mutant-tractor.com/2010/10/27/flashing-a-dead-mother...

Once you have everything hooked up and triple checked (don't forget to hook up port 1 to +3V and

2 (that is also connected to 18 on the LPT) to 0V) Then it's time to shut down your laptop/desktop

that you wish to flash from and change the BIOS to boot from CD, restart again and boot into the

CD. (BEFORE BOOTING MAKE SURE PARALLEL PORT IS SET TO LPT/378h IN BIOS!)

Once in the CD select a program called NTFS4DOS (In File System>NTFS Tools>Avira NTFS4DOS)
This will give you access to your C:\ drive where you saved the CWSDPMI7 and SPIPGM2 and your
BIOS's ROM earlier.
Once there the next thing to do is execute this from the DOS cmd line:

SPIPGM2 /d DUMP.ROM

This dumps the ROM to a file in C:\ called DUMP.ROM

To analyze your dumped ROM upload DUMP.ROM to here:

http://www.fileformat.info/tool/hexdump.htm (http://www.fileformat.info/tool/hexdump.htm)

Select to 10000 characters

Compare this to the first 10000 characters of the downloaded ROM (upload this via the same

method)

Next you have to flash the ROM do this by executing these commands in DOS:

CWSDPMI

SPIPGM2 /i to make sure that the program can read your chipset and the cable is ok.

SPIPGM2 /u to unlock the bios.

SPIPGM2 /e to erase the bios.

SPIPGM2 /s BIOSNAME.rom to flash the new bios.

When flashing your screen should be somewhat similar to mine:

(http://mutant-tractor.com/wp-content/upload/2010/10/img6517c1.jpg)

And your done!

Maybe one last ROM dump to make sure all has gone to plan and boot your dead mobo up!

Credit to:

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Fix dead motherboard through SPI Port | Mutant_Tractor™ http://mutant-tractor.com/2010/10/27/flashing-a-dead-mother...

http://www.fccps.cz/download/adv/frr/spi/msi_spi.html (http://www.fccps.cz/download/adv/frr
/spi/msi_spi.html)
http://rayer.ic.cz/elektro/spipgm.htm (http://rayer.ic.cz/elektro/spipgm.htm)
http://mondotech.blogspot.com/2009/05/asus-p5b-deluxe-bios-recovery-spi-flash.html
(http://mondotech.blogspot.com/2009/05/asus-p5b-deluxe-bios-recovery-spi-flash.html)

Any problems/error codes leave a comment and I'll do all i can to help!

Just covering my ass: By carrying out these actions your are individually and solely responsible for

anything that may/may not happen to your motherboard/other devices.

© 2010 Myles Gray (Mutant_Tractor)

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