After several attempts of directly altering BIOS bits using RU, I managed to brick my HP Spectre x360 laptop. I got myself a CH341a programmer and I’m now attempting to recover the system. A few questions:
1) The only SOIC8 package I’ve found on my board so far has the designation 24256E which seems to be a 256Kbit (32K x 8b) I2C EEPROM. Most of the guides on this forum are for 25-series SPI EEPROMs. Are there BIOSes that are stored in 24-series ones or am I looking at the wrong chip?
2) Using the Windows CH341a programming tool in one of the guides here, I noticed that chip detection only works with 25-series but not 24-series chips. I can’t find an exact chip for 24256E but OnSemi has the same chip listed as 24C256. The software has two separate listings for this generic part (3V and 5V) so which one should I be using?
3) If the EEPROM itself is 32KB in size, why is my entire stock bin image (extracted from HP BIOS downloads) just 16KB? I’ve also used FPT to read the system before and it’s also 16KB. Again, am I looking at the wrong chip?
I’d really like to fix the bricked system so any help would be much appreciated.
Make detailed pictures of mainboard from both sides and post. Highly improbable what you’re writing. Bios update I could find for HP Spectre x360 Convertible Laptop PC 13-aw2000 contains 1 complete 16MB stock bios image with FD/ME.