Teclast X98 Plus II not stable

[Takashi Kuratsuwa]

Please help me. I have X98 Plus II which is not stable. I posted the following question in the existing topic;

teclast x98 plus ii wifi problem

Being there the question may not be answered and thus I started this new topic.

I hope someone can give me a solution or  a hint on whether this is software or hardware problem.

The following is a quote from the existing post related to the Wifi problem.

Veaceslav wrote:

Not really. I would say that it has bad hardware design. I was able to pinpoint that the reason of unexpected reboots, freezes etc were solved after I set the max frequency to 1.44 Ghz. Running at 1.84 is not stable at all, which means they did not implement a correct power delivery to the CPU. At this point I am just waiting to see when my tablet will fail completely.

Hi Veaceslav
Would you let me know how you set the max frequency to 1.44Ghz for stabilizing the X98 Plus II? My tablet is not stable at all especially in Windows 10 mode, giving error messages like Memory management, Page fault in Monpaged area, Driver IRQL not less or equal, PFN list corrupt. The Android is bit more stable but often unexpectedly shut down. After reading your message I changed the Bios setting as follows;
Advanced->CPU configuration
Power Technology: Custom
EIST: Enabled
Turbo Mode: Disabled
This resuled in 1.44Ghz in CPU test with some hardware test apps which gave 1.84Ghz with original setting.
But I do not feel that my tablet became more stable with this setting. I would appreciate it very much, if you could let me know how you managed to stabilize your tablet.
I got the impression that the tablet unexpectedly shut down when it writes into memory. At Chipset-> South bridge->LPSS&SCC Configuration my eMMC is shown as Unkown NCard B6C68359 (57.6GB). But the Bios display on a Youtube video of this tablet shows it as Sandisk SEM64G B1B2C58A (58.4GB). Can this difference be the cause of the unstability?
I hope this is not caused by a hardware problem. When I am tweaking Bios, the tablet is stable. When I updated the Andorid in recover mode, it went without any problem but the following Windows 10 upgrade had to be repeated 3 times to be completed. I love the display of this tablet. For this reason I would like to solve this problem. Thanks for your help in advance.
T. Kuratsuwa

[Takashi Kuratsuwa]

Since I have not received any reaction to my post, I decided to give more information with my situation.  It was not normal when it arrived. I had to recover the Android system. It went well but the installation of the Windows 10 was stopped in image writing and had to be repeated several times till it was finally completed. The Windows 10 was extremely unstable, often shutting down with the errors I mentioned in my previous mail and was not usable at all. I removed it by again with the process of recovering the Android. The Android is more stable than the Win 10 but still shuts down often and thus cannot be used for writing something on it. Sometime I can watch Youtube for 2 hours without shutting down. But viewing 500px photos, which is my main purpose of buying this tablet, it shut down often randomly.
My tablet is C2D4. Android 5.1.1 and has build number V1.05_20160617. I run the Android apps like Stability test, System repair, Phone doctor but they run well and do not detect any hardware faults. But often the tablet is frozen when I leave it ON for long time like one hour. I can not see any screen problem, Wifi is OK. I can not connect the tablet to PC for update mode with developer mode and usb dibugging ON but can connect it to PC for recovery. I hope you can give answers to the questions I made in my previous mail and some suggestion for the solution, as I do not have any idea what is wrong with it.

Today I found the follwing site showing the Bios info for this tablet.

Teclast X98 Plus II BIOS Settings Presentation. Download BIOS file from here!

It looks the Bios of my X98 Plus II is older than the one I downloaded from the link in the site;

Core version: 5.011 / 05.11 (5.011) : The value in () is that of my Bios.

Compliancy: UEFI 2.4, PI 1.3 (Same)
BIOS version: tPAD 5.01 ? (On my Bios Project version: tPAD 3.05)
Version: 2.17.1249 (same)
Build Date and Time: 08/10/2016 15:25:28 (06/21/2016 11:11:43)

Unfortunately the site does not say its Bios is for C2D4 and does not explain the flushing procedure in detail. I believe it is worth tring to update the Bios. Can anyone say that this Bios can be used for C2D4 and show where I can find the detailed procedure using this bios data (X98 Plus II Bios.rom) and AFUWINGUI software?

Thanks for your help in advance

T. Kuratsuwa

[Takashi Kuratsuwa]

It turned out that the windows memory test and Memtest both detected memory errors. The memory test in the Android environment did not detect memory errors. Can this mean that these memory errors still can be caused by the current Bios fault?

Anyway I will contact Teclast for repair rather than taking a risk of updating the Bios. I am still hoping someone can give me opinions on this issue, after reviewing the attached memtest log.

Attachments:

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[Veaceslav]

Hey, sorry, I didn’t read this forum in a while.

I am sorry to tell you, but from what I read you have a hardware problem with your RAM( from memtest). This means that the tablet is not usable and you can not fix it(unless you replace the whole board). I suggest you to get a replacement, if the tablet is new.

Before I was talking about voltage drops under load, which could(and will) lead to freezes and crashes, but so far my tablet was stable(reboots were on android, maybe once every 3-4 days) under normal use.

 

 

[Takashi Kuratsuwa]

Hi  Veaceslav

Thanks for your reply. I am still waiting for the answer from Teclast on the repair. But it costs.

Do you think it is worth trying to update the BIOS to the one mentioned above?

 

[Takashi Kuratsuwa]

I managed to make the tablet stable by changing RAM related Bios settings. Windows 10 Memory test and MEMTEST86 test did not meet any errors.But I realized the memory size was changed to 2GB. I should have stopped here and be happy with the stable tablet with the reduced memory, as I use mainly Android. I sent the following mail to Teclast asking some questions related to unbricking the tablet.

Dear Sir

The situation has changed. I bricked my Teclast X98 Plus II by changing its Bios setting.

The tablet became stable when I changed the following Bios settings;

DDR DVFS disabled

Auto detect LPDDR3 DRAM disabled

LPDDR3 Chip Select 1 Rank

DRAM Speed grade Slow

After this change the tablet passed Window memory test and MEMTEST86 with no errors.

The tablet was stable and not so slow.

But I found that the RAM memory size was only 2GB.

Here I believe I made a silly mistake. I changed Channel Selection from “Single” to “Double”. I shut down the tablet and pressed the power button. But it does not start.

I understand that the warranty of my tablet is now gone. But please help me by answering the following questions;

Is there a way to reset the Bios without reflashing it? I spent almost all day trying to find how to reset the Bios which is normally easy on PC motherboard, but I was not able to find how to reset the Bios on your tablet.
This tablet uses eeprom “25L064CV1G”. Please let me know the voltage used for this chip. 3.3V or 1.8V? I understand I have to flash the rom to unbrick the tablet, if your answer is No to my first question.
Is this eeProm is the same as “GD25Q64B”?

Fortunately, I have saved the Bios data before the problem happened. But I found the newer Bios for X98 Plus II in the following page;

Teclast X98 Plus II BIOS Settings Presentation. Download BIOS file from here!

https://mega.nz/#!0wlzWagT!a9kdJPXcLNsLR-g87XWn2NSMeQtN3KUQLLlS2LTdhMU

But is this good for my X98 Plus II C2D4?

The above mentioned eeprom used on this tablet is not on the support list on any Bios writers. I did not find any technical data for this eeprom on the Internet, except for a polish site mentioning you can use it on a writer as “GD25Q64B”. I would appreciate it very much, if someone could answer my questions I sent to Teclast. I bought the following writer. I am wondering whether I can use this with X98 Plus II eeprom.

25 SPI Series 24 EEPROM CH341A BIOS Writer Routing LCD Flash USB Programmer

[Veaceslav]

I have no experience with flashing BIOS on this tablet. It seems that you disabled the RAM bank that was defective. I suggest you to stop here, otherwise you risk a total brick and BIOS will not solve hardware problems in RAM.

You should not mention that you messed with BIOS, because there is no way of them telling you that you did that. Sending it to warranty is still possible as far as your tablet does not have any physical damage.

Even if you get a replacement you will still be annoyed with poor WIFI and other problems. If the shop where you bought the tablet allows you to get another device in return, I highly suggest that, even if it will cost you 20-30 euros more.

I asked Chris to remove this device from suggested list, because it is really bad, but I got not reaction(or maybe other devices are even worse).

[Takashi Kuratsuwa]

Hi  Veaceslav

Thanks for your comments. As I wrote to Teclast, my tablet is now bricked. It does not start. If there is no way to reset it somehow, I have to try to reflash the bios eeprom.  Now I need some information on the eeprom on this tablet. I hope Teclast will help me, answering questions I sent to them.

I bought this tablet from a German guy. Normally German people are korrekt and tell when the items they are selling have problems. But this guy did not. This is why I decided to go diretly to Teclast service. I opened the tablet to check the eeprom type. If I succeed to unbrick the tablet, I will also make the wifi mod.

[Veaceslav]

I am sorry to tell you, but Teclast is not going to offer you any help( many users have different issues and I don’t know a single one that received help).

This is the risk you take when you go for something cheap: No warranty and very high failure rate.

Even if my tablet is still working, I am looking to ditch it and buy something else, with warranty and known manufacturer.

[Author]

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