welp, i think my laptop is bricked 🥲 (display show the boot logo with BIOS progress bar full, but it’s stuck there, can’t go into the boot menu, BIOS settings or diag menu)
i tried letting it unplugged on battery and CMOS battery for ~46 hours, same behaviour 🥲

welp, buying a (E)EPROM/Flash programmer it is then 🥲

but that way i will be also able to potentially repair the laptop of a friend that crashed during a BIOS update so 

(E)EPROM/Flash programmer received 
BIOS chips seems to read fine 
i did multiple read and checked the checksum, i guess i need to re-read the 16Mb one, 5 files, no checksum is equal 
welp somehow i have trouble getting a reliable read from the 16Mb one, i always get a different checksum (i tried 6 runs of 5 read each)

welp, i tried more but i think the clip cable is not making good contact on the chip

i guess that mean i would need to desolder it 

chips extracted  

(i also knocked off 2 condensators but i was able to put them back  )

and they all read fine on the 5th first reads  

i also backup the 64Mb again to check against my first backup, and it’s the same so it’s all good 

meow! flashing of the new firmware done and it checked correctly  

now i need to solder back the chips 

welp, it's resoldered  

i knocked of 2 more capacitors but was able to put them back in place, i tested everything for continuity and shorts multiple times and it looks all good to me, gonna clean the area and test it 

it's even more bricked than before  

so far the behaviour seems to be :

  • power on LED stay on (normal behaviour)
  • caps lock LED stay on (which is not normal)
  • no LED activity for wireless, hdd and charge (which is not normal)
  • Fan spin at max speed, then computer totally shut off, doesn't reboot on it's own

my hypothesis is that the Embedded Controller (which check a part of the hardware before the BIOS kicks in) is working (i didn't touched it so normal) but is not seeing the BIOS, watchdog kicks in, shutdown

but also, i feel happy about the whole situation

usually i would be spiraling in the neg but thanks for me working on myself and meds i'm taking i'm able to take a step back mentally about all of this

that also helped me taking it slow during the whole thing, verifying my work multiple times, re-doing it just to make sure it's even better/cleaner/safer

so overall i'm very happy cuz i very much improved my soldering skills and overall work by being more careful and taking it slowly, without pressure

so i left everything as is for now, gonna dig that later then i will have more energy

taking it slowly, not overworking and overwhelming myself

meow 💜✨