MSI 790FX-DG70: Another MSI product bricked using their utility

[FuzzyLogician]

Hello all, after months of trying LPT flashing I finally found something that looks much better, BCUSB, hats off to the Eng dept.

Synopsis:
MSI 790FX-DG70 Motherboard bios:
System crash-to-reboot in the middle of flash while using MSI's flash utility, cause = bad flash software combined with Hyper-transport sync buffer overflow error mid-flash-(ironically is what the flash was to fix.)
Motherboard powers up, no post , no display, no beeps - typical bios failure symptoms.

Prognosis:
Looks very much like the boot block and programming in the Winbond W25Q80BV bios is scrambled.
Have verified via continuity test/trace that pin-outs do match those in the basic SPI config for this board.
Board does have SPI pin-out and BCUSB is connected and does read the above ID as the chip on-board.
BCUSB has gone red to blue connecting to Motherboard. Appears that a reprogram fix is possible.

Attempted thus far and the Results:
I have not been able to determine the "gender" of MSI's Bios update to be BIN or HEX. I suspect BIN.
for this motherboard. when looking at console the first part of write seems to go for a few seconds before 3 sets of verifications fail per address line. At this point I am guessing 3 things: 1 Perhaps there is a WP involved keeping the data from being written to address, 2 The start location for the push is incorrect, 3 the data IO rate is too fast not allowing enough time to write.

I have been able to blank the bios to FF FF FF...FF.FF.FF and write either of the BC bootloaders contained in the BCUSB software downloads without issue or error displayed in console.

The current questions are:
To start out with, are the MSI bios files in the form of BIN , HEX or other needing a conversion of some sort?
Is the IO speed to fast maybe needing throttling back, if so how for SPI ?
Is it possible there is write protect pin needing the be brought Hi or Low ? Doubtful as I am seeing write with bootloader and can fully FF the entire memory on the Winbond W25Q80BV chip
Does someone happen to have a bootloader to flash a bootblock for this chip, an actual bios dump or an actual MSI 790FX-DG70 ?
Any ideas ?

 

[FuzzyLogician]

Was able to push V 1.0 of bios ROM to and see bits and pieces in eeprom. I have ID'd AMI bios and also words and sentences that pertain to emergency flash recovery by floppy or USB. Still even though it appears some data was pushed it looks like I still get errors on verify as the bits haven't changed in some portions of memory on the windbond. I'm wondering if I need to possible flip MSB and LSB and see if it needs loading in reverse order perhaps.

 

[FuzzyLogician]

Able to get JDEC ID of EF 4014, on W25Q80 but writes seem inconsistent when verified.

 

[D3m0n]

Currently out of the country , should be back next week the 8th and i should be able to look into this for you , if you wish to change any settings set software to manual settings and manually insert settings from datasheet .

 

[FuzzyLogician]

Thank you D3m0n, I welcome any datasheet specs, ideas, pointers and or help betting this bios functioning again as this is new territory for me. I have a vague idea of what I'm doing but, but thankfully not nearly enough experience in botched flashes.
I'm rather determined that a bad flash and a $7 chip toasting a board won't stand in my way to getting the board running on all 4 full 16X PCIE lanes.

 

[FuzzyLogician]

Thanks D3m0n, for pointing me toward the datasheet and the manual setting section.
While the EEPROM data sheet did provide some information but not all the information that I needed so I began to experiment with settings.
While in AUTO mode BC/FC USB read fine but writing it did not do well because of many mismatches on verification.
The two settings that were the key to getting the write to work are under manual SPI settings (Erase Size 0X100 ) and ( Sector Erase 0x00).
Anything greater than Erase Size 0x100 would start sending mismatches out and the datasheet setting for Sector Erase 0x20 put FF between code segments.
Changing to Sector Erase 0x00 placed 02 or 00 in place of FF between code and also compacted it when read back from BIOS EEPROM (Windbond W25Q80 (1 Mb 1,048,576 ) JDEC ID 4014.
Renamed MSI bios v 1.7 file to have .BIN and also .HEX extension and rebooted each time after pushes.
Final reboot after push of bios V1.70 FF status on LED started cycled as it had before and PCI VGA card had video output with bios image on screen and now able to access all bios / hardware settings.

My initial issue was Hypertransport Sync Flood error causing System Halts, BSOD (WIN7 64), and reboots. Bios flash was attempt to jump over problem code to new bios.
While flashing using M-Flash Hyper when a Transport Sync flood error hit while in the middle of bios write, evidently it wiped out EEPROM which was writing the Bootblock code when system was fully updating bios.
System is working 100% now.

I am posting the following diagram for others who might own a MSI 790FX-GD70 which may have been corrupted but MSI's M-FLASH Utility or other.

 

[FuzzyLogician]

Issue with MSI 790FX-GD70 bios FF code resolved -Fully operational now.

Cheers to all,
FuzzyLogician...

 

[superchad]

Thanks D3m0n, for pointing me toward the datasheet and the manual setting section.
While the EEPROM data sheet did provide some information but not all the information that I needed so I began to experiment with settings.
While in AUTO mode BC/FC USB read fine but writing it did not do well because of many mismatches on verification.
The two settings that were the key to getting the write to work are under manual SPI settings (Erase Size 0X100 ) and ( Sector Erase 0x00).
Anything greater than Erase Size 0x100 would start sending mismatches out and the datasheet setting for Sector Erase 0x20 put FF between code segments.
Changing to Sector Erase 0x00 placed 02 or 00 in place of FF between code and also compacted it when read back from BIOS EEPROM (Windbond W25Q80 (1 Mb 1,048,576 ) JDEC ID 4014.
Renamed MSI bios v 1.7 file to have .BIN and also .HEX extension and rebooted each time after pushes.
Final reboot after push of bios V1.70 FF status on LED started cycled as it had before and PCI VGA card had video output with bios image on screen and now able to access all bios / hardware settings.

My initial issue was Hypertransport Sync Flood error causing System Halts, BSOD (WIN7 64), and reboots. Bios flash was attempt to jump over problem code to new bios.
While flashing using M-Flash Hyper when a Transport Sync flood error hit while in the middle of bios write, evidently it wiped out EEPROM which was writing the Bootblock code when system was fully updating bios.
System is working 100% now.

I am posting the following diagram for others who might own a MSI 790FX-GD70 which may have been corrupted but MSI's M-FLASH Utility or other.
View attachment 633

quick question about this, is this hookup valid for other motherboards? and are Pins 1 and 2 and 7 and 8 on JSPI1 hooked up to the same pins on the chip? some other pictures i have seen show to hook up pins 8 and 2 to extra pins on the BlackcatUSB

 

[.FuzzyLogician.]

quick question about this, is this hookup valid for other motherboards? and are Pins 1 and 2 and 7 and 8 on JSPI1 hooked up to the same pins on the chip? some other pictures i have seen show to hook up pins 8 and 2 to extra pins on the BlackcatUSB

Hello Superchad, it has been a bit since I have been on here. Currently fighting IRONPORT with delivering e-mails to my e-mail server and haven't been getting any notify e-mails from blackcatusb.net as a result, it was just dumb luck I passed by and couldn't get in, had to make another account using a different e-mail server... Now on to your question answering the best I can...

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Answer to your First question:
The JSPI1 will most likely be different per each bios chip , my chip on 790FX-GD70 is Winbond W25Q80. I carefully tested the chip leads with an Ohm meter on continuity setting to find out what pin-outs lead to which leg of the chip. The chip specs were gathered from the manufacture's web site and applied to this scenario others were by trial and error narrowing down each time to a the target settings to enter in mainly the READ and ERASE settings

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Answer to your Second question:
YES. I set out to diagram the pin-outs using colors to match the connections. 1 & 2 AND 7 & 8 showed continuity on the connection check between the EEPROM IC and the JSPI1 pins
--------

Initially I thought I was going to need a controlled DC bench power supply to drive the flash process but I was able to get it to work without anything special....

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Hypotetical / Speculative answer to - 8 and 2 to extra pins on the BlackcatUSB:
It is possible Superchad that the other pictures you have seen were addition VCC ( voltage ) to drive the process. But without seeing and working with those specs and hardware I can only speculate to what the additional wires were used for.

As you can see not all the bios leads were use , I was glad they they did not use the Pull-up / Pull down WP (Write Protect ) feature in my scenario. There for a while I was really wondering if they did make use of the WP, KUDOS AGAIN D3MON for pointing me in the right direction, it gave me some ideas to work on.
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Also clarification for those who read the title:
Another MSI product bricked using their utility, ( "their" meaning MSI's flash'n'trash program
... not BlackcatUSB or software....

 

[FuzzyLogician]

Just giving an update years later. That mother board is sill rock solid , but slow, the fix worked and has held everything together.
The blackcatusb defiantly work the investment and I keep it in my special bag of tricks, thankfully nothing as really bricked as bad as the afore mentioned motherboard. Still things like this are Geek10 on the meter and I still love it.

- Cheers to all and greets flying to ~~~~-► D3m0n