32 MB file, 2x16MB IC - how do I flash this?

BIOS/UEFI Modding BIOS Modding Guides and Problems
1

Hi,

I’ve got a little problem with an appliance from Aliexpress.

I requested a BIOS update from the vendor for an integrated, fanless system, since the original BIOS was missing values for UUID, manufacturer and so on, which hindered me to backup this host through veeam. (Veeam needs a UUID in BIOS to identify it correctly). It’s an intel tigerlake i7 box with 6 intel nics. It has an Aptio UEFI BIOS.

TopTon (the seller) sent me a BIOS file, 32MB in size and I tried to flash this booted from an UEFI stick. First I dumped (at least I thought so) the BIOS, which resulted in one 16MB file. Then I tried to flash the new file, resulting in a warning of the flasher, that the filesize is wrong, but I can flash anyway, with any additional data being truncated. I hesitated, but then proceeded, which was stupid :frowning: After a cold reboot nothing worked anymore.

After some back and forth with the seller, I’ve received 2 USB images to flash the bios unattended, but nothing works. I formatted the stick according to guidelines (using Ventoy as well as Rufus). Since nothing worked, I then bought a C341A programmer thinking this would help.

When I connect the programmer with the claw, not 1 but 2 ICs with 16MB each are reported back from one connection. All files I received are 32MB in size.

I tried flashing back the backed up 16MB file, but this didn’t help either. Flashing the 32MB file doesn’t work, since I can only select one IC at a time and the size mismatches.

How can I split up the new BIOS correctly, so that each IC receives the correct info? I’ve looked at the files with UEFI tool and they contain Intel ME parts as well as the BIOS part. I believe that only the BIOS part would be 16MB in size, while only the ME part is 16MB as well.

The ICs reported are GIGADEVICE GD25Q127C and GD25Q128X. Opening the new BIOS in UEFI tool, the VSCC table only contains info for EF4019 (Winbond W25Q256) and C22019 (Macronix MX25L256). So I thought they sent me the wrong file, but they insist its correct.

Any help would be really appreciated. Also if you need more info, please let me know.

2

Simply divide the 32 MB flash file into 2 parts, 16 MB each. FD, GbE, ME, maybe parts of bios reg to first chip, rest to second chip.

3

Thanks for the reply. But how do I actually do this? Could you point me to a guide and/or the tools need? I’ve got Neoprogrammer to flash, UEFITool to open the image. But I would need to extract the parts from the bin and then recombine them. How can I achieve this?

Sorry, I’m not totally new to BIOS problems, but this is a bit more than what I would normally need to know :wink: