How roll back Coffeelake mod done on Maximus IX Apex (Intel Z270)?

BIOS/UEFI Modding BIOS Modding Guides and Problems
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@MeatWar Wasnt there another way to unlock the bios by shorting a pin? I remember doing somethig like that in the begging.

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Yes…on Pluto’s guide, E1. HDA_SDO/GPIO33 (a.k.a. “Pinmod”) you need to identify the correct Audio Codec IC package and pin assigment.

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@MeatWar

So I took the board out today and put in my old 6700k cpu in the Apex. Used a stock cooler. Anyhow it wouldn’t boot or post. So I wasn’t sure if board was dead or damaged or something wrong with the bios. Maybe I needed to use both 8 pin power connectors but my spare psu only had one. Read all you really need is one.

After reving heatsink I noticed the cpu wasn’t correctly oriented and I thought thats it I must have fried it. So I fix the orientation and press power and it goes on and boots into a copy of windows from another Z270 board I had and I load up CSME and do a bios dump and low and behold all my descriptors are unlocked!

Considering was able to load windows and it felt stable not sure if worth the roll back. Haven’t checked other bios on other side though.

Thanks

Edit: After pressing the dual bios button switch it seems like both sides are Apex X bios and not Apex 9. At least descriptors are unlocked. Maybe should use jumper instead.

Thanks again

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24

Well found an update bios version on HwBot forum. Probably same place where I found the original mod. This one version 2603 included manufacturer support for Resizeable bar support. Considering my system is already modded if I was to upgrade the mod I could just fptw64 -bios -f upgrade.bin?

Going to try tomorrow. If @MeatWar can you please comment if you think will work. Also not sure how dual bios will affect the process.

Thanks.

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Then FPT tool should write allowed.

I think it will only write to the current select bios IC.
You can always use USB BFB feature for flashing mods.

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I decided in the end not to roll it back and instead used fptw64 to flash bios region to version 2603 provided by dsanke on HwBot forum. The reasoning was due to fact this newer version brought Resizeable Bar menu option on the bios level. Next I’m thinking of finding an i3 9350K B0 stepping as it will not need pin modifications according to others and I don’t want to go through what happened with the instability from the 9700K. Windows 11 support also a bonus. However in my case if I was to roll back and to satisfy the title of the thread all I would really need is to use fptw64 as luckily I thought ahead by unlocking all those descriptors. Thanks.

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