[fbrozovic]

Valentin wrote:

@fbrozovic how did-you do for using SPI method? my chuwi is bricked (no bios) and I’ll probably try this but I can’t find anything about SPI on HI10..

Have a look at the picture here: http://techtablets.com/forum/topic/chuwi-hi10-bios-update-for-x64/page/2/#post-20959

You need to open up the tablet (use a guitar pick or credit card along the sides), the SPI flash is located under the metal shield on the PCB.

[fbrozovic]

Has anyone tested a UHS-I card with speed class 3 (e.g. the SanDisk Extreme Pro or the Samsung Pro) in the Hi10 yet? Is the SD controller capable of SDR104 bus speeds? I’d like to get a fast SD card to store a couple of VMs on there, but there’s no point in spending extra money if it isn’t…

[fbrozovic]

Laura wrote:

are there any seals on it? or its just common advice?

No seals, if you’re opening it just be careful not to leave marks on the plastic and you should be fine…

[fbrozovic]

Marcin Kruszyński wrote:

Mine Hi10 (first VC Lemon x32 batch) is not booting anymore and your SPI flashing seems like rescue. I’m new to this so can you write or PM some short tutorial how to flash Winbond using rPi? Can it be done using other PC or do i have to own SPI programmer? Thanks.

Alright, here goes:

You need a Raspberry Pi or a similar board with a 3.3V SPI interface and Linux. On the Pi, install Raspbian and enable SPI via raspi-config, after rebooting the device file /dev/spidev0.0 should be present.

Download flashrom and its prerequisites:

$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install libusb-dev libpci-dev
$ wget http://download.flashrom.org/releases/flashrom-0.9.8.tar.bz2
$ tar xf flashrom-0.9.8.tar.bz2
$ cd flashrom-0.9.8
$ make && sudo make install

Next, hook up the SPI flash to the RPi. Be very careful about shorting anything on the board, in particular the VCC pin of the flash. There is a small capacitor nearby connected to ground, and if you short the two together, you will break the PMIC on the board. The pinout of the flash can be found here: http://www.winbond-usa.com/resource-files/w25q64fv_revl1_100713.pdf

/CS -> SPI_CE0
DO -> SPI_MISO
GND -> GND
DI -> SPI_MOSI
CLK -> SPI_CLK
VCC -> 3.3V

flashrom should now be able to recognize the chip:
$ flashrom -p linux_spi:dev=/dev/spidev0.0
flashrom v0.9.8-r1888 on Linux 4.1.13+ (armv6l)
flashrom is free software, get the source code at http://www.flashrom.org
Calibrating delay loop… OK.
Found Winbond flash chip “W25Q64.W” (8192 kB, SPI) on linux_spi.

If it does, go ahead and flash the BIOS image:
$ flashrom -p linux_spi:dev=/dev/spidev0.0 -w BIOS.BIN
flashrom v0.9.8-r1888 on Linux 4.1.13+ (armv6l)
flashrom is free software, get the source code at http://www.flashrom.org
Calibrating delay loop… OK.
Found Winbond flash chip “W25Q64.W” (8192 kB, SPI) on linux_spi.
Reading old flash chip contents… done.
Erasing and writing flash chip… Erase/write done.
Verifying flash… VERIFIED.

[fbrozovic]

Mine has a Realtek RTL8723BS WiFi module.

[fbrozovic]

Saad A wrote:

Thanks. Actually, I happen to change two parameters in the BIOS and the tablet stopped responding. I talked to the seller, he wants me to send it back for repairs or refund. But considering the shipping cost and taxes, I was wondering if I can manage to repair it myself (considering my experience in the field). However, I do not want to remove the metal shield, as I may have to send it back to seller. I noticed four test points near the tablet buttons, the points seems to be used before for testing/flashing. If they happen to be connected to the flash or some other debugging circuitry, they may be of some use. It could be helpful to other people with dead Hi10s as well. One point is GND other is VCC (I did not connect a load to very it really is VCC) ,the other two shows around 1.96 V w.r.t GND. Any idea, where they are connected or any other test points connected to the FLASH?

 

If you’ve opened it up already, you can take off the metal shield as well, it’s not soldered down and can be placed back on the board easily – it won’t leave any marks. It’s just held in place by the small metal tabs. I’ve attached a picture of my setup – I’m currently tinkering around with replacing the Chuwi logo in the BIOS…

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[fbrozovic]

Saad A wrote:

Can you tell me pinouts for SPI (is it a header available or did u connect directly to the chip)? and the flash chip number? I wanna program the flash with minimal mess, since my tablet is not booting. Thanks.

The chip is a Winbond W25Q64FV (64Mb), the datasheet is here: http://www.winbond-usa.com/resource-files/w25q64fv_revl1_100713.pdf
I connected the RPi to the chip using a couple of E-Z-Hooks (http://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/XKMGRY/461-1011-ND/528232)  and some female-to-female jumper cables. You should then be able to flash the chip with flashrom. The chip is located underneath the metal shielding on the PCB, so you have to pry it open. If you’re using something conductive to do that, be very careful that you don’t short anything on the PCB, especially the battery.

Sergio wrote:

How to know wich table version and bios do I have.

If I enter on Bios It says :

Project version: C106_B101UAN.102

That seems to be an old version, mine (newer revision with the blue USB3 port) has C106_B101UAN.605 on it, you should probably flash the 603 BIOS – as Przemo noted above, it seems that WiFi and BT won’t work with the 605 BIOS.

 

[fbrozovic]

EDIT: Don’t flash this BIOS if you originally had the 32-bit BIOS on the tablet, use the one above (603) instead. Przemo noted that the hardware revisions seem to be different and that WiFi/BT won’t work with the newer BIOS.

Since I had the newer tablet revision with the 64-bit BIOS on it, I decided to open up the tablet and dump the flash with a Raspberry Pi via SPI. I then tried reflashing that image from the EFI Shell with the x64 afuefi binary. My tablet still boots, so I would assume upgrading from an older version would work as well. However, if you do try this yourself and brick your tablet, please don’t hold me responsible. Again, do this at your own risk.

Unpack the archive onto a FAT32 formatted flash drive and boot from it by holding F7 on boot. You should be dropped into the EFI Shell. First, you have to find which filesystem number the flash drive is mapped to – to do this, start by typing fs0: <enter>, and then type dir <enter>. If you see the files you copied onto the drive, you can now flash the new image with

afuefi BIOS.BIN /p /b /n /x /l /reboot

If you see some other files, try again with fs1, fs2 and so on.

A couple of things to note:

• The binary is a bit newer than the one posted above and has a date of 12/14/2015 as opposed to 12/01/2015.
• I didn’t restore the default settings before dumping the BIOS, so you’re probably best off loading the default settings in the BIOS after flashing.

Good luck!

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