A couple of weeks ago, [Doug Brown] bought a Ryzen motherboard, advertised as “non-working” as well as discounted accordingly. He noticed that the seller didn’t test it with any type of CPUs old sufficient to be supported by the board’s stock BIOS revision, as well as decided to take a gamble with upgrading it.
Not having a supported CPU in hand either, he decided to go the “external programmer” route, which succeeded as well as provided this board a new life. This is not why we’re composing this up, however. The reason this article caught our eye is since [Doug]’s research study leaves no stone unturned, as well as it’s all there to discover from. Whether with cautious observation or complete research, this article covers all the important points as well as more, serving as an example to comply with for anyone looking to program their BIOS.
For instance, [Doug] properly explains a style problem with these typical programmers resulting in 5 V getting onto the 3.3 V data lines, as well as fixes it by rewiring the board. Going with all the letters in the ICs part number, something that many of us would dismiss, [Doug] notices that the flash chip is 1.8 V-only as well as procures a 1.8 V adapter to prevent the possibility of frying his motherboard. After discovering out that the 1.8 V adapters don’t work for some people, he reverse-engineers the adapter’s schematics as well as confirms that it, indeed, should work with the specific parts on adapter he received.
Noting one more letter in the part number implying the flash chip may be configured for quad-SPI operation, he adds series resistors to make sure there’s no possibility of the programmer damaging the BIOS chip with its hardwired pinout. This is just an example of the insights in [Doug]’s article, there’s method more that we can’t mention for brevity, as well as we motivate you to inspect it out for yourself.
With this level of care put into the process, it’s no surprise that the adjustment was successful. The type of inquisitiveness shared right here is worth aspiring to, as well as writeups such as this commonly surpass general-purpose tutorials in their insights as well as usefulness. What’s your “successfully making utilize of something offered as non-working” story?
If you’re looking for other insightful BIOS stories, we’ve covered somebody reverse-engineering their BIOS to eliminate miniPCIe card whitelisting. We’ve normally covered BIOS adjustment stories in laptops, since there’s more incentives to customize these, however a great deal of laptop BIOS articles will apply to desktop motherboards too, such as this supervisor password removal story or this LibreBoot installation journey by our own [Tom Nardi].
Thank you [Sidney] for sharing this with us!