NUC9 Pro Corrupted BIOS

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

Not necessary.

Where else would I have to put it then? I’d like to use both ethernet ports. And what about the WiFi?

EDIT: When changing the MAC address in GbE from 88 88 88 88 87 88 (Intel Stock) to the actual Address, the files in NVRAM are generated with the correct address. My only problem is that I have no idea how to add the second MAC address, and generate the Efi files for it. (Same for the WiFi)

EDIT 2: I also have the serial and other IDs, just don’t know how to add them. You said editing NVRAM is tricky, are there other approaches? If not could you maybe link a thread where NVRAM editing is explained?

There are several threads here where NVRAM got ‘emptied’ / replaced with stock, but it’s depending on the type/kind of NVRAM, there’s to my knowledge nothing like an universal guide.
I won’t be able to help you any further without the original bricked dump and the dump of the stock bios (after having booted several times).

Hey

I was able to add all the MAC Addresses for both Ethernet, WiFi and Bluetooth. Now I just need the serials, Windows Key and “some other data” you mentioned.

Why do you need the dumps? Can you do something I can’t? Do you have special analytic software? Why don’t you just tell me what you would do so that I can replicate it?

For example, basics of NVRAM editing, required software etc. Or where to find the Windows Key in the dump and the “some other data”?

That’s a misunderstanding. I don’t need your firmware or want to have it. That was just an offer.

For the moment it seems so, yes.

How would I know what to do without having a look into the dump?

You’re a new member of the forum and you will most probably disappear when your own problem is solved.

You’re not even willing to share your firmware so that it might become a teaching example for you and others in the forum- compare to the first link posted.

So why should I invest time in ‘teaching’ you?

Here are some links within the forum where NVRAM got edited, but there are differences regarding different types / different structure of NVRAM and your NVRAM might not have the same structure. But you should have found these already…

I’m out of this at this point- good luck!

A offer that I’ll politely decline due to privacy reasons (dump contains sensitive data)

You could tell me what you’d be looking for instead of gatekeeping.

And now you’re making assumptions about me too, just like Mr Meathead. I thought you were different.

I was planning on compiling all the information that I found necessary and to post on here after a successful restoration.

First of all I don’t even want to be taught, I’m an autodidact. I was just looking for information. But it would be helpful if you’d tell people how to fix their devices themselves, for the only reason that perfectly good electronics don’t end up in a trash pile.

It’s clearly my fault for looking for help in a gatekeeping community, but I don’t understand what you gain from it. Anyways this pretty much concludes what I had to say. Maybe you’ll be more open to help someone next time.