NUC9 Pro Corrupted BIOS

Hello WIn-Raid! I’m in need of your help, I have a NUC9 Pro here and the BIOS is corrupted. I want to dump it but there are 4 SPI on the board and I have no idea which one contains the BIOS.

Here’s an image of the board:

Since you had provide “clearly” and enough information on the NUC9 PRO model identification, the best answer from any user will be, make backup dumps of them all.

anyway…primarily it should be the “Green” Macronix IC
Others can be TB, TPM, EC, ME etc
By looking on the specs sheet of each IC, we get the storage capacity and correct voltage of each IC as well as pin conection.

NUC9QN_TechProdSpec.pdf (intel.com)

https://www.asus.com/support/faq/1052506/

https://www.asus.com/support/faq/1052510/

https://www.asus.com/support/faq/1052611/

BIOS Update Version 0076 for NUC9I5QNB / NUC9I5QNX / NUC9I7QNB / NUC9I7QNX / NUC9I9QNB / NUC9I9QNX

EDIT: If you don’t understand it at all, then the task is not for you and you should take to someone who knows the job.
If already made “some” dumps…analyse the file…because we cant from this “side” without access to it.

I don’t really understand your answer. I obviously already tried basic troubleshooting and BIOS recovery before attempting to dump the SPI…

why do you have to act weird? I thought this board was for helping people?

That’s a misunderstanding. This board is meant to collect information so that people are able to help themselves.

Your understanding would mean that a lot of people come by just for getting help offered by very few people and then disappear again. That’s more the definition of a helpdesk.

You might consider that asking for the ***th time for basic information and giving the same basic tips might get boring.
I for example basically don’t feel the urge to ‘help’ people- if the problem is interesting, basic information is properly given and the user who is in need for help seems to be able to cope with the procedures needed I might step in trying to solve the problem. No one gets payed here, it’s our free time…

Good luck!

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I wasn’t looking for a Helpdesk, but information on how to dump these Intel NUC. I did it on a Mac Pro before (cheese grater) when its flash failed.

Which other Information would be required to get a helpful answer?

Answered, within the best knowledge when is not a piece of hardware in possession of the user.

previous quotation and now deleted by the user…smart axx

Contradictory info previously provided by user… made any dumps or did NOT AT ALL

Any user that embraces such operation on an Apple system and have success on it, can be only joking with us, when comes to a forum asking help on read a pair of ICs with a programmer.

Resuming sir… you seem to be one of those smart axx… that’s comes easily and “innocently” begging for this or that as a poor “fellow.”… you need to try a different approach and right/sincere words when addressing certain forums… we never know whose on the other side, the same applies to me and all of us.

Ending… be straight and honest on the subject or try your chances somewhere else and don’t waste your time complaining of my answer or other answers to this forum.
As you can see by innumerous subjects, everyone here tries to help in some way or another…but as long as some data and useful info provided…cause there’s no miracles here or a damm bunch of guessing wizzards.
Over_n_OUT and welcome to my fan list.

Are you hallucinating? I never said I made any dumps and I never edited my posts or delete anything? WTF?

I was able to dump the Mac Pro Chip and sent the dumps to a guy who restored the corrupted EFI stuff with the help of the guys in a Mac Forum, my bad for assuming I would get any help with a windows machine on here.

Poor soul… blame whoever and whatever you care for, even your words of excuses still not convincing enough, …yes we are all a bunch of poor “smucks” on windows and so on…all the best my friend.

honestly dude get some professional help. I mentioned the Mac to explain that I have done a similar thing before, not to insult you or call you poor. I mentioned Windows because this forum is called Win-Raid. God damn you must be having a bad day

I’ve got some time now and i need to amuse myself, can i use you?
Lets pretend that we are all “smucks” here… what do you understand or pretend to do, by using the word “dump”?
WC apart of course…“dude”
Oh and what was that “similar” thing you did on the Mac, you made a “dump” using what? DOSDUDE1 rom tool?
I think that no one here, still didn’t figure it out, if you own or assuming an SPI IC programmer or if you use your own “hands” to do it, is that NUC PCB from the garbage, is it working, never worked, exhibition sample…
Gona be honest with you… i also have several Macs… i simple cant do it by “hand”…tsss it “burns” when injecting voltage to it… really cant figure it out why, im a “smuck”…period.

An answer would need a question- and there’s no question in your first post but just a statement?

Of the chips you marked it’s possiblly the one marked green- as already stated. But there are other chips that might be SPIs in the pic and we still only have a pic of one side of the board. The red ones you might ruled out simply by checking the datasheets and then by size: 1 MByte bios was long ago.

Otherwise I’d like to cite my answer to a similar question now just 3 days ago:

Otherwise there’s not even a model mentioned and neither a link to the stock firmware / support page provided.

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Why do you keep twisting my words? Seriously, what is your problem?

A dump is a binary file that you get when reading the flash’s content with a programmer. I’m using a FlashcatUSB with their matching software.

For some Macs, you’ll have to desolder the Flash first, this was the case with my old Mac Pro Cheese Grater from 2010 or 2011 as well. Maybe it works for you too. I’d recommend checking MacRumors, they have all the information you need.

Thank you so much for your reply.

You are right, I should’ve phrased it differently. My question is if anyone has worked with these Intel NUC Pros or Extreme before (Those with removable compute units) and if anyone knows which flash contains the BIOS.

I’ve checked the board and it only contains 4 SPIs. If you want to verify it yourself I can take some detail pictures of both sides.

It’s a NUC 9 Pro (NUC9VXQNX), iirc they are built by Asus.

What did happen to this machine before it bricked?

You need anyway a valid dump of your firmware, as written. The Asus update contains several forms of updates, but one complete firmware image, too. But you might want to recover serial and Win code, maybe and you definitely need MAC address from GbE.

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Finally had some time to get back to this machine.

The PC bricked after changing and saving some BIOS settings.

I made 4 dumps of the 256 Chip and compared them to ensure they are identical. Also flashed the default UEFI file onto the Chip and the machine POSTs again, with access to the BIOS.

Next step would be extracting the data you mentioned from the dumps and add them to the default UEFI, then write that to the chip, right? Are there any good guides for Intel NUCs for this matter?

No guides. Might be in NVRAM or padding in bios region and if I remember correctly you have a GbE region which needs the correct MAC address.

Search for something known like serial in HxD and UEFIToolNE, attach or give a link to a dump if you want me to have a look.

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The NUC has 3 MAC addresses, two for Ethernet and one for WiFi. Oddly enough the GbE Region contains only one of the two Ethernet MACs.

Ethernet 1:
MAC1

Ethernet 2:
MAC2

WiFi:
MAC-WIFI

To get ethernet working, would it be enough to extract the GbE Region and replace it?

EDIT: Also found the Serials and other Identifiers in NVRAM. The file from Asus is missing those entries. Do I have to add them through UEFI tool or by manually changing the hex values?

I’d extract the GbE region from your dump and transfer it to the stock bios.

One would have to have a closer look, editing NVRAM is a little bit tricky, GUID store or not…

Take a fresh dump of the stock bios after some machine starts (FPT should work) to find out which values are missing and which are recreated. The DMI values are one thing, but there might be other values of interest.

Any idea on how to get the second MAC address into the GbE region as well?

The stock firmware dump is missing all the DmiVar Entries and has the stock MAC address in both NVAR stores