(UEFI) Dell XPS 15z L511z modded BIOS - and HOWTO

[follow_me]

what about this one?

http://www.ebay.com/itm/New-WINBOND-IC-C...46156955bc

this one store up to 16 MB will never have probably firmware space issues. hehe

Interesting one , I've ordered couple of this too

[kasar]

haha, I wish I had a wallet like yours

[jkbuha]

...and we're back.

After a lot of faffing about, involving a desoldering of the bios chip, and ruining one of the legs and lifting up the PCB pads with the soldering iron in the process I've thrown in the towel, reordered a replacement mobo and put everything back in place; mods, pimped ME firmware and all. Even though the heart-surgery was not a success a lot of interesting things have been learnt/raised in the process, for instance:

1) Is it possible to actually replace the lifted PCB pads back under the BIOS chip?
2) The L511z solders the CPU to the board, so it's not that easy to remove/replace the CPU, which is a shame as I have my eyes on a nice faster quad proc running at the same wattage. Has anyone ever managed to desolder the CPU?
3) There are some (very) subtle differences between the L511z variants. It isn't even possible to flash the EEPROM dump from the L511z with motherboard revisions E0 and E1, even with the same CPU.

4) This one is quite an eye-opener. On dual-boot systems, you can set the FSB to 105MHz, and reboot into OSX with the FSB settings persist. *However* this can only be done in UEFI mode on OSX - Chameleon freezes at boot. Which raises an interesting question; has anyone fully experimented with modifying FSB settings in Windows UEFI mode?

Any updates on the 5MB firmware hacking?

[gabiz_ro]

Can you take a macro photo of damaged area?
Maybe there is a way to fix it.
Board is Quanta SS8 ?
There are testpoints on data lines and other pins are easy to reconnect to initial trace.
What pin are damaged?

[kasar]

yeah, there are a lot of chances of fix your motherboard, also replacements for those are quite expensive, that was another reason I ordered sockets, they only need to be soldered once, leaving the motherboard "safe", the chips are way cheaper and can be replaced easier.

if you burned the traces, you may be able to solder a thing wire from an alternative soldering point of that trace, and solder a thiny wire.

however, that will be really relicated,and should be secured with hotglue.

and of course it isnt designed to be desoldered.

I may be a little annoying with the sockets stuff, but I found it really saved me time and from posible accidents, my board would be probably ruined without it ^^

about the cpu desoldering i think you need one of those hot airs stations and another cpu to be soldered with balls method instead pins one.

I didnt made those, however, I think it cant be done in normal conditions unless you have proffesional equipment.

about me, I still waiting for my proccesor upgrade to arrive home.

it didnt arrived yet, I hope I didnt got scamed ....

[jkbuha]

   

Not sure the HTC One and Tapatalk will render this pic as high res as it should, but let me know if it is sufficient.

How do I tell if it is a quanta board?

The damaged pins were on the bios chip, I've now ordered a few replacement ones (just in case this works).

[gabiz_ro]

I reffer to pad damaged,if you know how they are numbered,see dot marking pin 1 ,that's top view.
http://www.ps3devwiki.com/ps3/File:W25X16A_-_SOIC-8.png
Somewhere there must be some code on the board to identify model.
L511z from what I found use that Quanta board

Can't see anything clear on photo,I'm on the phone too right now,but even on PC ... Too dark and out of focus.

[jkbuha]

Attached a better version. I guess most of the pads are gone, and I'm not sure if they can be fixed at all.

[gabiz_ro]

Tell motherboard model to search schematic.

[jkbuha]

Ironic... it actually pointed me back here. @TimeWalker had stated a few years ago (god how long this post is) that our boards are actually Quanta.

Here is the high-level schematic: http://schematiconline.com/wp-content/up...5Z_SS8.png