Tbook10 BIOS

[Christian Stocker]

Althoug not visible from the thread’s title, you might find your questions answered here: http://techtablets.com/forum/topic/tbook-10-e6n5-drivers/

[Peter]

That’s one of the threads where I read about the BIOS issues. But as far as I understood Bryan’s tablet is bricked and I haven’t read anywhere about a backup.

 

[Christian Stocker]

Don’t know if we’re talking about the same thing, but in the first post of that thread at line 7 (depending on your screensize and zoomlevel 😉 there is a link he provided with the android and windows images and drivers. Also on the end of the same post there is an document explaining how to install.

[Peter]

Correct me if I’m wrong, but these are backup files of the emmc? (downloading them right now)
What I actually search is a dump of the BIOS chip. (most likely one of those little spi flash)

 

[Christian Stocker]

Peter wrote:

Correct me if I’m wrong, but these are backup files of the emmc? (downloading them right now) What I actually search is a dump of the BIOS chip. (most likely one of those little spi flash)

Sorry about not understanding your requirements. Did’t know, that such files exist and are shared. Don’t you need some kind of eprom burning device for that ? Maybe you could ask Bryan, what he did, after he bricked his BIOS. I thought he had to send in his tbook 10 for exchange or so.

[Bryan]

No one’s got a bios dump and Teclast has yet to released ANY bios files so we’re on the short end of the stick currently. I couldn’t find the CMOS or the battery when I opened her up and NOTHING would reset my bios to stock defaults…  Why exactly do you want the bios dump anyway? There haven’t been any bios issues that I know of and there’s no reason to flash it unless it’s broken.. Whatever you do, don’t touch the iGPU settings it’s the only 2c I have for you on that though.

[Peter]

Sad to hear this. I do not want to flash the BIOS anyway, I just want to be prepared to do so.
I really love tinkering around with Bios Settings :), so it’s just a matter of time until something breaks.
The actual BIOS settings seem to be stored inside the flash chip (mentioned here for a similar device: Link),
therefore they won’t be restored by cutting the power off.
Anyway after my Tablet arrived, I’ll take a look inside of it, read that chip and post a dump here.

Since you’ve already disassembled it, is there anything special to take care of? Do you have any pictures of the inside?

[Bryan]

I didn’t bother taking pics, sorry. It’s a standard setup using clips to hold the front and back together, note that the bezel on the glass is part of the glass and not the back. There’s tons of tape holding down the wires but I’ve only torn down and repaired my iPhone/laptop/desktop aside from opening this up.. It’s pretty dumb how the bios isn’t on its own chip which means it’s unflashable if it kills itself.. There was no way to get the device to talk to my laptop after bricking the bios and it refused to boot a safe mode or anything of the sort.

[Peter]

Should be easy then. Note that the BIOS actually sits on its own chip, together with the settings made.
Reading and writing that chip is pretty easy, a cheap programer only costs about 3 dollar. (guess an arduino will also do)

If you look at this picture from a Tbook11, you can see that they have made a cutout on the RF shield / heatsink.
That’s the BIOS, easy to access once you’ve opened the case.

Maybe there is some kind of recovery mechanism, but I guess we won’t see any documentation on that.
My Tablet should arrive in two weeks, I’ll post a little guide then.

[Bryan]

Hm, I don’t recall seeing a cutout for the RF shield/heatsink on my t10.

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