BIOS update resulted in a bricked NP5797

Well here goes.

First off, I was running 1.00.09 FS / 1.00.08 for a little over a year and wanted to update the BIOS/EC to 18 / 12. or possibly 19 if I didn't mind losing XP support (in an attempt to resolve skipping/dropout issues I was having with a Native Instruments Audio Kontrol 1 which seem to be low-level ACPI/USB related).

I managed to get the EC firmware in and running without a problem, however, I had to use command line options /X and /DOSKEY along with the backup switch to save the old BIOS in case something went wrong. I also renamed M570TU.18 to BIOS.WPH because the flash utility complained. (I didn't run the update.bat file since i wanted to backup first...) And it was all too happy to update the BIOS on its own even though I was going to do that afterwards using the generally accepted method.

I opened the BIOS file in wordpad just to see what it was like. (the old Award ones were actually partially in zip format--at least the ones for my Abit KT7...) I noticed that the BIOS file looked a little like the mess you get somewhere between the source code and the assembled binary itself, a bunch of bits of code intermingled with compiler warnings and 'This program cannot be run in DOS mode' type strings... The flash utility thought the file was perfectly fine...

I haven't lifted the keyboard yet to clear the CMOS (my next step) but it looks bad...

I can turn it on, the power light comes on, and the fan comes on low speed. But the screen doesn't turn on and it just sits there. The Fn+1 trick works, I can toggle the fans between high and low, so I am getting through to something (the EC).

Does anyone know any way to get to the emergency boot block (if it hasn't been FUBAR in the process)?

I found this so far, but I haven't been successful:
http://web.telia.com/~u43311424/crisis-recovery-disk/

So that leaves me with a couple options if CMOS-clear doesn't work.
1. Call PowerNotebooks/Sager and go from there
2. Desolder flash chip from mobo, see if I have anything laying around that's compatible, and see if we have a programmer for these things at work...it's likely we even have compatible flash ICs at work...I'll have to check.

If I do have to remove the IC, I'm putting a socket there if there's room....

eesh.

 

Can you try to flash the BIOS 18 again but this time with the update.bat on DOS ?

 

No, I can't get a bootblock or anything. It just turns on and sits there.

 

you might still be able to do a blind flash... with a bootable USB flash drive.

zfactor made a guide to do this.

 

I ended up sending it in to get fixed. They replaced the mainboard under warranty, and the BIOS rev is up to date on it.

One of the issues I was having, I/O transfers not at full speed unless the CPU was operating at full load, has been fixed. I haven't tried the AK1 yet, but the problems it was having were related. I'll try this later after I back up since before when it crashed the file system frequently got trashed.

Unfortunately I can't tell if that's a BIOS issue or a mainboard problem since both have been changed.

Some other notables:

• I now have an extra rubber plug for the SD/MMC slot
• There is a 'Warranty void if removed' label over one of the main screws that wasn't there before
• I also have an extra right-angle SATA drive connector adapter
• The ExpressCard blank insert is missing
• ..and the lid has a nice scratch in it now. DOH! :-/