Toshiba P50T-A Bricked! Help please!

[Tom Pernis]

I was upgrading the BIOS on this model Toshiba (PSPMHA-01600L) in Win8.1 today from v1.0 to v1.9. Three quarters of the way through writing the FLASH the laptop shut down. AC mains was in and definitely on. Never in my life of flashing BIOSes has this crap happened.

Here are my options in order of preference:

A) Someone here can reveal to that that putting say FW.BIN on an MSDOS-16 USB stick and pressing CTRLB at poweron will fix everything (or something like this).
B) I can locate the flash chip, desolder it and JTAG the binary in. (I can do this).
C) Buy a new motherboard.

I'd really love A to happen. Does anyone have advice on this matter?

The BIOS file archive in question is this:

http://www.mytoshiba.com.au/file/downloa...s_w190.exe

7ZIP doesn't show any obvious .fd or .bin files in winflash.exe but the UNIX command 'strings' shows there is likely a BIOS in here.

Here are the files in that archive:

7,789 fparts.txt
1,326,552 fptw.exe
237,528 FWUpdLcl.exe
65,536 idrvdll.DLL
1,560,576 ME_FW.BIN
18,432 ModelName.exe
118,784 pmxdll.DLL
119 UBIOS.BAT
5,758,976 winflash.exe

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

[stenor]

I extracted a file called 150 from inside the winflash.exe\.rsrc\BIN\ folder

This it the bios. Recovery file name: VG10S.rom

So you rename 150 to VG10S.rom put on usb stick and try that procedure.
You may also try FN + F or just F, and FN/Win + B. There are many known combinations you can try searching if those doesn't work.

Also you could make many files and call them different names in case that is not the correct name.

Regards

[Tom Pernis]

Thanks Stenor.

I put vg10s.rom on a USB stick and tried the suggested keyboard combinations when pushing the power button plus some others.

The USB stick's LED never even flashed once.

Is there a trick, like taking the power and battery out, pressing some keys, the putting the power cable in to get it into recovery mode?

There is a sticker on the mobo "AMI-Aptio NB 2006 BD27 3109".

Given this is a UEFI system is there a chance this mobo is permanently bricked?

[BDMaster]

You can use an HW SPI Programmer and rebuild the Firmware !
Regards

[stenor]

Hey again,

I'm just gonna quote BDMaster from another thread here, in case you want explore this method further:

Prepare an USB Stick
not bigger than 4 GB Format it into Fat32 and copy into the Recovery File (file extracted
= unpacked) Not folder only the FX64.fd file !!!
Then use the Recovery Procedure :

- Shutdown the netbook (notebook)
- Remove all peripheral devices
- Remove battery, Remove AC power cord
- Press and hold the power button for 10 seconds (battery and AC power still out), then release
- Put the USB Memory Stick in the USB port
- Hold "Fn" + "Esc" and plug the AC power cord in
- Now press the power button (whilst still holding Fn + Esc).
Wait until the fan will run, then release "Fn" + "Esc" keys
- The fan will run for about 2-10 minutes and the USB drive activity LED will blink
- I think the netbook rebooted automatically. If it doesn't, unplug the AC power cord once the fan has turned off

The bios should be updated with the modified BIOS, and boot as per normal.

May be on Toshiba You have to use different Keys combination so try to use too

Fn+ESC, Fn+B, Fn+F, Win+B

Let me know
Regards

P.S. If It will not work then try to rename the FX64.fd as Insyde.fd or Bios.fd and try again !

I've never used this recovery procedure myself, so I only know what I've read on this forum and MDL forums, and this seems to sum it all up nicely.

NB: And perhaps you should use the *.fd extension instead, you do have insyde bios after all. (Andy's Tool reported *.ROM extension, but that may be incorrect, idk really)

[Tom Pernis]

Well, I pulled the laptop apart and desoldered 2 SPI chips, both Macronix. One is a 4MB device and the other 2MB. Using my FTDI SPI board and the super useful http://www.flashrom.org/ program I could read and write the two Macronix chips. Alas, the new BIOS file was a wee bit bigger than the 4MB chip and obviously some data needed to go onto the 2MB chip and from what I could tell the ME_FW.BIN is meant to go onto the 2MB chip too. No luck in the end.

Who knows what damned voodoo the winflash.exe does when it burns the flash chips - the whole experience was a PITA and wrote off a perfectly good laptop.

Every Toshiba repairer I called said there was no fix, magical key presses, secret repairer-only-toolkits or anything else they knew of and the mobo was a write off with a new one being $800.

Can't you tell I am pissed off?

[BDMaster]

I hope You made a Files Backups of the Eeprom Chips containing !!!
If so please upload them here and I will give a look for You !