HP Pro 3330 (H-POPEYE-H61-uATX): Ivy Bridge Support

[Hooper]

Just tested the board out of the case to check for earth issues. No post.
Then I tested i5-2400S and i3-2120 cpus. No post and error code 2E, as before.

[ngocthienta]

Now this is getting strange. Can you try without RAM again? Still code E5?
P/s: for image attachment, you can attach a file and click insert it into post.

[Hooper]

Tried i3-2120 without ram, no boot, beeping, code E5.

[Hooper]

       

I got 2 pics only to attach. Hope it works.

[ngocthienta]

Oh I see, you're reading the code upside down. The E5 is actually 53 - correct for no memory installed, and the 2E is actually 32. 32 is the CPU PEI initialization stage, but you have tried different CPUs. so it seems something else is at fault here. Can you try reflashing the BIOS chip? You mentioned that you have some kinds of errors with AsProgrammer - that might be the issue. And regarding the failure when using the clip-on connection, from my experience, for some particular boards you'd need to connect both 4-pin CPU and 24-pin ATX connectors, power on the PSU (but don't power on the board), and only then can the chip be detected in the flashing tool.

I've also made a test BIOS for you. If possible could you please flash it using CH341A to see if the system can boot up? With this BIOS, I think you would need to plug the TL611 to the PCI slot, not the PCIe.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1jywNZEL...sp=sharing

[Hooper]

Well, all the text orientation on the card including "POST LED" led me to read it the other way. But the no ram code seems to confirm your orientation.
What is in this test bios?

I did another quick test with different ram sticks this morning, no post.

I may not have time to look at this today.
Thanks for your help on this so far.

[ngocthienta]

The BIOS is nothing special - it's just a bit more modern with TPM2.0 external module support. It is a BIOS that I flashed successfully on the Popeye board, so here we're just exploring/eliminating possibilities of BIOS problem.

[Hooper]

It tried to get the clip to work with CH341, but it is futile. Hot air instead. I am using the original chip from the board PCT 25VF032B.
Read the chip and did a verify to original gigabyte bios. Verify failed at 0x00002000. Error "Verification error on address: 0x00002000, Device: 0x46, Buffer: 0xFF" Most of the line has different data in it. Why is it so?

The Gigabyte bios worked perfectly fine for 1 whole day using Win 11, and then starting giving post problems. It certainly seems that the bios was corrupted somehow whilst on the board.

[Hooper]

Here are the original Gigabyte bios and the one I read from my non-posting chip.
Removed files

[ngocthienta]

Read the chip and did a verify to original gigabyte bios. Verify failed at 0x00002000.  Error "Verification error on address: 0x00002000, Device: 0x46, Buffer: 0xFF" Most of the line has different data in it. Why is it so?

I think after the first boot, the board has written to the BIOS chip (maybe NVRAM or some sort of memory training) so it is no longer the same as the original file. Sometimes even Windows does some sorts of updates and corrupts the BIOS. Can you try my BIOS to see if the board behaves any differently?