ASMedia 2142/3142 firmware

Special Topics Other Tools (not BIOS modding related)
1

Hello everyone.
I need help regarding an ASM2142 that doesn’t work properly and keeps on freezing when performing I/O from the host.

I had tried updating the firmware following this guide (Station-Drivers - Asmedia ASM-2142 et ASM-3142 firmware Version 161115_50.02.00), and starting from the same version in the article (161006_50.02.00), but I think it made it worse.

The issue is that the ASMedia MPTool didn’t have a backup feature, and I didn’t think too much about it.
Fast forward, I wrote ASMTool, which you can find here (GitHub - smx-smx/ASMTool: Firmware dumper and various utilities for ASMedia USB Controllers and related firmware) and lets you read the ASMedia chip ROM/RAM to a file.

I’ve spent several years without bothering about that chip too much and forgetting about it (my board is an ASRock Z270 Extreme 4 and has the ASM2142 for the back USB3.1 port only)

I’d however like to fix it, so it would be nice if any of you guys with an ASUS/ASRock board or any of the boards listed here (ASMedia Technology ASM2142/ASM3142 USB 3.1 Host Controller) could run ASMTool to take a dump of their current firmware and post it here.

Note: there are newer firmwares listed on station-driver but they aren’t of the same chip revision and are rejected by MPTool.
I tried patching the tool to workaround this check but the result is that the USB port stops working until the older firmware is flashed back (flashing back appears to always be possible)

firmwares with 50 in the name are the first generation of hardware (e.g. 161115_50_02_00, the one i have), while 70 is the newer one.
I’m looking for a 50 firmware right now

Thanks in advance

1 Like
2

Hi there,

How do you build that project?
I do have an pcie card with an Asmedia 2142 chip on it.

Regards, William

3

You can download the builds from the CI runner.
For example, the latest Windows build is here: https://api.cirrus-ci.com/v1/artifact/task/6485647284764672/binaries/build/AsmTool-4d70d0da35.zip

1 Like
4

Thanks smx129.
Provided information on your discussion thread on Github.
ASMedia Firmware collection

I realize that PCi-e card is not what you are after, it has the ASM3142 chip on it.

Just a thought: I did not know how to use the ASMtool.exe, just executing the tool did not dump the firmware. Somewhere I stumbled over the command: ASMTool flash_read
and that worked. Perhaps give some more info on your README.md for noobs like me.

5

Nice, Thanks!. Although it’s not the same chip, it might be useful to others or for comparison purposes (Asm3142 is a revised Asm2142)

Thanks for the suggestion too, I’ll make changes once i get some spare time

6

Screenshot 2024-02-09 091833
Screenshot 2024-02-09 0918331021×758 39.7 KB

Hello,

I have the following problem.
According to the hardware ID, I have installed this adapter PCI\VEN_1B21&DEV_2142&SUBSYS_87CD1043 and would like to install the current FW

I downloaded the FW 210330_70_02_40 and tried to install it with this result.

What also makes me suspicious is that it shows a completely different SVID and SSID

7

before I update my firmware, dumping it sounds like a good idea. unfortunately the link for a built version is dead and the releases page is empty. Since I’m not on my development machine I’d prefer not to have to build the whole thing from source.

I do have an asmedia2142 chip, on my asus motherboard. So far I have not yet manually updated the firmware, but I suppose it could have been updated as part of a bios/efi update file.

EDIT: I ended up remoting into my dev machine to build. however running the binary on the local machine I get the error “Failed to load ASM IO driver”. I’m not sure if this is because I compiled on a different machine or because of something else.

8

Hi, I just created a build/release.
You can find it here: Release 0.1: CI: Use x86 build for Windows · smx-smx/ASMTool · GitHub

EDIT: I didn’t notice that you had compiled it. You need to copy ASMedia MPTool files/drivers next to it (or copy the program next to the ASMedia MPTool executable)