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Comment by eric__cartman | Hacker News Reader

I remember having to flash the spi chip with a raspberry pi, flashrom and janky wiring on an oldish Thinkpad. Not so good times :)

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I managed to brick my Asrock X370 Taichi a while ago... I had hoped that a BIOS update would fix some issues that I had, but did not notice that they removed a few things, presumably to free space and add support for newer CPUs. The update (from 6.40 to 7.xx) itself went fine, but unfortunately broke IOMMU groups and maybe more. Downgrading was not an option, I assume to prevent people from installing an older version that is incompatible with their CPU.

I managed to flash an older image with a tool from the BIOS vendor, but apparently messed up some settings and the PC would not even boot anymore. Fortunately, there was a pin header on the board right next to a serial flash chip and after some probing and fiddling with a cheap stm32 board I managed to get it running again.

I might upgrade to a newer CPU soon-ish which will again require the never BIOS version, let's see how that goes...

I bricked an Alienware gaming PC back in 2014 and was facing having to junk the whole PC because replacing the motherboard would be too expensive. Found a community online that stepped me through using my RPI to reflash the BIOS. Used the PC for another 5 years after and still have it in my closet now its something I shouldn't be so proud of but still am ha

Thanks for posting this. I would never have though to check if this was possible even though I know rPi are being used as pseudo mod chips in gaming consoles.

coreboot/libreboot? I still keep the 8-pin chip clip I used, even thought I'm probably never going to flash another chip using it again (terrible contacts), but at least a good memory!

Or just kill the wifi blacklist and make it hackintosh ready. ;]

Close, it was to kill the stupid wifi blacklist but just to upgrade the wireless n card with an ac one I had lying around form a broken machine.

What is this referring to? What wifi blacklist?

Some laptops (notably Thinkpads) enforce a whitelist of PCI IDs for wireless cards - an "unapproved" card will display a warning in the firmware and won't be visible by the OS.

The excuse if I remember right is FCC compliance, but I call BS given that most other manufacturers successfully get away without it.

What about the vast majority of us who don't care what the atavistic FCC say?

That is interesting... I never knew that until now...

Are there any other defining features of the cards that are accepted or the cards that are rejected other than PCI ID? (i.e., Manufacturer, Chipset, MAC, Country Of Origin, Year Manufactured, ?, ???)

Also (and I say this not to you, but to the Internet at large) --

If every PCI ID belongs to a Manufacturer (a company -- and they do!), and some companies cards are accepted and other companies cards are rejected, then...

Wouldn't rejecting some manufacturers Wi-Fi cards -- be in conflict with Federal Trade Commission Antitrust regulations?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Trade_Commission

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_antitrust_law

...In other words, while IBM or Lenovo, or whoever makes the Thinkpad these days -- while they would be complying wtih FCC regulations...

Wouldn't they also simultaneously be in conflict with FTC Antitrust regulations?

There are dozens of us! (It's nice to know I'm not alone)

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