[Saad A]

fbrozovic wrote:

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.

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?

[Saad A]

fbrozovic wrote:

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!

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.

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