Hi. So I managed to brick my mobo Asrock ab350 pro4.
I got a ch341a so I figured I would try to flash a new bios using that.
I have read lots of guides but ran into some issues that I havent been able to solve.
I have both asprogramer and the ch native software. I can read the chip w25q128fw.
I use the 1.8 volt adapter of course.
the problem is: I erase the chip. it passes blank check. and in asprogramer there are only FFFF. In the ch native software I can still see some data even if that also passes the blank check. I think that is the problem. I write a new bios but it still boot loops.
I have tried with board power and without. I just use the BIOS file downloaded from ASROCK. Just mentioning it in case that is also a problem.
Does anyone have any ideas? I am about to give up but figured I would post here as a final try.
So at an initial glance here are a couple of ideas:
Slow down the programmer SPI bus speed
I have had issues in my electronics projects using programmers where the chip ID read worked, but sustained reads and writes failed. I think I was suffering from using a clamp-clip or too long wires from the programmer to the device.
The BIOS flash file you are using is not formatted for directly writing to the flash chip.
Maybe it has a header or similar so the programming software can check if it has been corrupted adding a few bytes? This is hard to fix, unless someone else either has a recovery BIOS from ASROCK or someone has posted an edited file.
Do a clear CMOS via the jumper on the motherboard in case the “user” portion of the flash chip has junk that is bricking your boot
Try testing the CPU and one stick of RAM in another motherboard in case the existing CPU has been damaged.
It is better to test the CPU & RAM in another motherboard than testing different CPU & RAM in the AB350 Pro4 just in case it is killing CPUs or memory
Maybe try 3. first as its easiest? You could additionally restore the previously “bricked” BIOS you dumped with the CH?
Hopefully you can find someone who has been successful with an ASROCK Ryzen motherboard to rule out 2.? You could also compare the exact file sizes from your BIOS dump, even though it was bricked, vs. the downloaded ASROCK BIOS file. They are typically always the same size as the flash chip, so if the download BIOS is larger there may be extra information in it. You could also try to identify the file type of the downloaded BIOS, in case the ASROCK BIOS is compressed - as a hack you could try opening it with 7zip as it will detect most compressed formats.
-1. should be somewhat easy to test, if you can find the right command line flag etc. to control the bus speed.
Recommendation: If you do get the motherboard to boot, immediately flash it with the manufacturer’s BIOS using their tool from a bootable USB key or windows (if you have to!). Just in case there is an extra step that the official flash software does that your programmer does not do.
Best of luck, I was fortunate that the NVIDIA GPU firmware I needed was enough to get the card to appear in windows, where I could reflash it with the standard NVIDIA tools.
For some reason OEM’s sometime provide a bios flash file with extra bits in it like the user mentioned above.
Try comparing the original bios with the downloaded one and erase the extra bits, I read up on this same issue with people trying to unlock their GPU memory bus by modding the bios