USB flashing (Lenovo E520)

[rvanpruissen]

Hi guys!

First of all, nice forum! Lots of useful information. I am trying to revive a Lenovo E520 (1143-3KG) by replacing its BIOS as a first guess. I based this guess on information from Lenovo that lots of these E520s die from a faulty batch of EEPROMs used during production. Of course, I could have bought a new BIOS chip, but as a die-hard DIY nerd, I'm trying to create one myself using a MiniPro 866 USB programmer.

So far I have extracted the files from the Lenovo rom package .exe and decompressed the $0A8H000.FL1 file located in the folder named after the BIOS (see table below) and programmed the result on a new chip (same type as original). This doesn't work. So I have a few questions:

1. Did someone write a manual for flashing bios chips?
   
2. What am I doing wrong? Or am I doing it right and is something else broken on the laptop?
   
3. What are the BIOS and Embedded controller parts? Do I need to combine them on the chip?
   
4. Or does someone maybe have a working BIOS dump for this particular laptop (or know where to find it)?
   

Please help me, I usually know my way around computers, but feeling very lost at the moment (as always when learning new tricks )!

Cheers


Rick



ThinkPad Edge E420, E520
------------------------
Package BIOS (BIOS ID) ECP (ECP ID) Rev. Issue Date
--------- ---------------- ---------------- ---- ----------
1.24 1.24 (8HET42WW) 1.12 (8HHT30WW) 01 2012/10/12

[lenovo]

Hey Rick,

I run into the same problem. Do you have any luck until now?

I'm not sure but I think the $0A8H000.FL1 is not the right on. Its to big (2,5 MByte) there also 2 other files $0A8I000.FL1 and $0AGB000.FL1 (both 2,0 MByte = 16MBit, that sounds good for an eeprom chip).

Where can I buy an new programmed BIOS chip?

Regrads,

Joerg

[rvanpruissen]

Hi Joerg,

I haven't been working on the laptop since Newly programmed BIOS chips can be found on eBay (not sure about the quality though). This might also be an interesting read. To save you some time, there's no real answer to the problem in that forum, but some people have had succes with Lenovo support.

Kind regards,

Rick

Hey Rick,

I run into the same problem. Do you have any luck until now?

I'm not sure but I think the $0A8H000.FL1 is not the right on. Its to big (2,5 MByte) there also 2 other files $0A8I000.FL1 and $0AGB000.FL1 (both 2,0 MByte = 16MBit, that sounds good for an eeprom chip).

Where can I buy an new programmed BIOS chip?

Regrads,

Joerg