Aopen Digital Engine DE65-HA Borked--needs help!

[real_paredown]

First post for quite some time--not sure if this is the best place to ask questions?


I semi-bricked an Aopen Digital Engine DE65-HA.

It has an AMI eufi bios. What I get is drive seek (on Dvd) or USB--but black screen and no boot. I have tried working with the AMI recovery procedure using a USB stick, and although it enumerates it on first boot, it does not seem to go back to flash drive and do anything

Coincidentally, while I was banging around the interwebs, I found at least one other person did this--like me, he also flashed with the bios for the DE65-HAI (which I now know has differences in configuration--including support for Intel ME 8.x which is why I was messing around with it--Aopen has not patched any of their older bioses.

From this post, I see this other person was skilled enough to remove the bios for reprogramming--and was able to edit a file provided for another (similar) AOpen machine. https://forums.mydigitallife.net/threads/need-bios-to-aopen-mp67-d.35286/

One option--remove the physical bios chip and reprogram which seems beyond my ability. (No bios backup--working when you are tired is always a bad idea!)

Second option seems to be using the clip style reader with CH341A software. Questions:

Are there better or worse sellers of these devices on eBay? 

If I purchase and get the corrupted bios read and dumped, is it possible to have someone walk me through compiling a working bios?

Is there any way to implement the newer version of the Intel Management engine found on the incorrect bios, so that it would be workable on my machine?

(The latest correct bios (v. 1.03) is still available for download, although it is not the complete bios, if the other person who made this mistake was correct.)

Thanks,
Dean (I was here before as paredown--but lost my password and couldn't figure out what email it was tied to...)

[real_paredown]

Probably a little light on the details--I was flashing from the Win 7 desktop (I know!--but I was tired...) and the flash appeared to be going OK, and then it got stuck on the verification stage, and locked up the machine. I finally shut it off).

I went ahead and ordered a CH341A  reader kit from Amazon--so I will try to read what is still on the machine as soon as I receive it.

Thanks,
Dean

[real_paredown]

Reader arrived--looks like I got a good read (verified multiple times).

System is Aopen Digital Engine DE65-HA
BIOS: AMI Aptio
CPU: Sandybridge i5 2520m
Manfacturer's page here for latest bios update: 1.03 
DE65-HA factory bios uograde

There was a previous request for a SLIC modifcation to one of these systems in this thread, but the modified partial file has been taken down:
DE65-HA SLIC request

I have a post from another forum of a full bios for the companion machine--the AOpen MP67-D which was the consumer machine with mostly the same specs. (attached)

And I have the recovered bad bios, attached as 'corrupt'

Can someone give some guidance about what editor I might use, or how I might reconstruct a usable bios. I'm assuming I need to recover the MAC (and other data?) from the corrupted file. Or can the corrupted file be put back together?

Uncharted waters for me!

Thanks,
Dean

[real_paredown]

Still hoping for some guidance on this. I flashed with the full bios fro the MP67-DU from the thread on My Digital Life using the CH342A programmer. Did the steps as suggested, erased, verified, and then programmed.

(Oddly the size of that file (as downloaded) was 8,193 instead of 8,192 and I got a message that it would be truncated when flashed. )

Using this full bios gave me a bootable machine, but the Intel Management gives a boot error (although shows a system device with no codes) on the desktop.

Can anyone offer guidance on how I would put the two files together--the corrupt original and the downloaded one?

The Digital Life thread is a bit cryptic--but says to work from 580000 in the dump. I have opened the two files I have posted and can see their structures are similar.

Should I be exporting from 580000 in the non corrupted file and then appending that to the header section of the original? 

(I think I can muddle my way through that)

[Mabuse]

real_paredown,
Beware of updating any AOpen Digital Engine with Intel 65 or 67 chipset from -HA (Sandy Bridge) to -HAI (Ivy Bridge).
As usual you got an error message from the AMI updater about a wrong BIOS-ID.
You ignored this warning and voila, you bricked your BIOS.
Now you have to exchange the old BIOS file (2,6 MB) with the new IPK13.ROM file in your hopefully dumped SPI file.
Then you have to flash back the modded file with an SPI programmer and flashrom.

[Mabuse]

Part II  ;-)
For exchanging the BIOS file use LongSoft's excellent UEFITool ( https://github.com/LongSoft/UEFITool ) and on https://www.win-raid.com you will find a lot of information about BIOS updating, modding and how to use the UEFITool.

Another useful link  https://www.flashrom.org/Flashrom