Reviving a "bricked" PC

[NW-Bound]

Quote:

Originally Posted by JoeWras I think the big lesson I get from your post is that The Chinese are experts at reading, processing and programming firmware devices. Who knew?

The Chinese have good engineers, and some of them come up with wonderful products that work superbly despite their cheap outside appearance. A Western company would make a nice metal case, and sell the chip programmer for a few hundred bucks, but the Chinese just did not care.

See the ChipMaster that I paid $1500 for 20 years ago, vs. the $50 programmer I just bought. The latter claims to handle 15,000+ devices. Son of a gun!






Or perhaps they know that it is pointless to spend money on the case, because other Chinese will just do a knock-off and kill them on prices. And so, they cut to the chase and put them out as cheaply as they can.

And indeed, the eBay source I bought from claims that it is a legitimate distributor. The Web page of the Chinese manufacturer claims that its products have been pirated, and that its software may not work right on the clones.

In the past, I have bought some Chinese electronics, and there were two brands on eBay and Amazon, They were identical, but with different manufacturer labels. Both claimed to be the original and the other was a counterfeit. Obviously, only one told the truth, and the other was a lying basterd SOB.

Yes, the Chinese are ruthlessly pirating from their own countrymen too.

PS. The universal chip programmers always come with a ZIP socket. You then use different socket adapters for different chip packages.

Below is the image of one.



I ordered some, but did not want to wait a few days for arrival, so wired up a kludgy one to get going.

[target2019]

Quote:

Originally Posted by NW-Bound The above is what you have to do when something goes awry, the boot tool ruined the BIOS, and the machine is "bricked".

Dell has a tool to recover from that:
https://www.dell.com/support/article...tablet?lang=en

I've never been bricked, so I don't know if the tool works 100%.

I went to Dell after my first post, and found a newer BIOS from July. Downloaded and installed with no problems. But I do see plenty of times during the process where I was tempted to say, "It's done." But then another sub-process started, and I was glad I was patient on this.

And of course I was wrong earlier, as there is no downloadable to create boot media with the BIOS update on it. You have to create a USB boot on your won, and add the .exe to it.

[Sunset]

Wow, I'm beyond impressed..

[NW-Bound]

Quote:

Originally Posted by target2019 Dell has a tool to recover from that: https://www.dell.com/support/article...tablet?lang=en I've never been bricked, so I don't know if the tool works 100%. I went to Dell after my first post, and found a newer BIOS from July. Downloaded and installed with no problems. But I do see plenty of times during the process where I was tempted to say, "It's done." But then another sub-process started, and I was glad I was patient on this. And of course I was wrong earlier, as there is no downloadable to create boot media with the BIOS update on it. You have to create a USB boot on your won, and add the .exe to it.

OK, this is the ultimate recovery boot program on the BIOS that is protected from being overwritten, as Joe Wras talked about earlier. You need some basic firmware on the BIOS chip in order to bring in the rescue program from the USB dongle.

I never had a Dell computer, only "special-deal" motherboards from Fry's Electronics, which do not have this feature.

[aja8888]

When I had a side business in the late 2000's building, selling, and repairing computers, I flashed a lot of Bios chips. But never pulled any and did what NW-Bound does. I'm impressed!

NW-Bound, you are the MAN around here when it comes to electronics and power stuff!!

[target2019]

Quote:

Originally Posted by NW-Bound OK, this is the ultimate recovery boot program on the BIOS that is protected from being overwritten, as Joe Wras talked about earlier. You need some basic firmware on the BIOS chip in order to bring in the rescue program from the USB dongle. I never had a Dell computer, only "special-deal" motherboards from Fry's Electronics, which do not have this feature.

For some inexplicable reason I thought you mentioned Dell. Ok, the reason is I think everyone has Dell PCs. LOL.

[NW-Bound]

Speaking of creating work for oneself on rainy days, let me tell you another story.

In the early 1980s, when IBM came out with the XT PC, I bought a PC compatible built by Mitsubishi. Instead of running at 4.77MHz like the XT, my PC ran at 7.17MHz or 50% faster. Yay!

Then, I read about the NEC V20 CPU, which executed the same instruction set as the Intel 8088, but with fewer clock cycles and gained another 50%. I just got to have that.

One Saturday morning, I sat down to unsolder the 8088 CPU from the motherboard. Then, I put on a socket before plugging in the V20 chip. Turned it on. Yeah, it still ran.

I could have damaged this machine by unsoldering the CPU. My very first PC cost me $1580 back then, when that was still real money. Yes, I like to play with fire.

[NW-Bound]

Quote:

Originally Posted by target2019 For some inexplicable reason I thought you mentioned Dell. Ok, the reason is I think everyone has Dell PCs. LOL.

Yes, I did mention that if I could not revive this machine, I would get my wife a used Dell computer for $200, which is faster than this machine even after the latter gets souped up with a quad-core CPU.

[target2019]

Quote:

Originally Posted by NW-Bound Yes, I did mention that if I could not revive this machine, I would get my wife a used Dell computer for $200, which is faster than this machine even after the latter gets souped up with a quad-core CPU.

I would have bailed at "brick" and spent the $200. But you have more time...

[target2019]

Quote:

Originally Posted by NW-Bound Speaking of creating work for oneself on rainy days, let me tell you another story. In the early 1980s, when IBM came out with the XT PC, I bought a PC compatible built by Mitsubishi. Instead of running at 4.77MHz like the XT, my PC ran at 7.17MHz or 50% faster. Yay! Then, I read about the NEC V20 CPU, which executed the same instruction set as the Intel 8088, but with fewer clock cycles and gained another 50%. I just got to have that. One Saturday morning, I sat down to unsolder the 8088 CPU from the motherboard. Then, I put on a socket before plugging in the V20 chip. Turned it on. Yeah, it still ran. I could have damaged this machine by unsoldering the CPU. My very first PC cost me $1580 back then, when that was still real money. Yes, I like to play with fire.

My first was a 512K Mac with external floppy. Over two grand at the time. Of course I had to join a group and learn about the interesting things one could do to a "closed" piece of hardware, at significantly more cost.

[misshathaway]

Quote:

Originally Posted by NW-Bound Dug out my trusty chip programmer, the ChipMaster 6000, that I bought 20 years ago (paid $1500 for it). OK, I had to find the software, and installed that on a PC running Windows XP to be sure that the old software would work. I can go back to Win 2K, or even Win NT if necessary.

That is one of the first good reasons I have seen for keeping old tech around. It sounds like you had fun doing this project, even if you didn't get to use the original chip programmer.

I am learning electronics at the baby level now and when something does not work, which is often, I love the challenge of figuring out why and trying to fix it.

[NW-Bound]

Quote:

Originally Posted by target2019 I would have bailed at "brick" and spent the $200. But you have more time...

As mentioned, my wife does not care for me to get her another machine, even if that's a refurbished machine for only $200.

And I am the obstinate type who would fix this machine before I stop using it. I broke it, I will fix it.

Tomorrow, when the used CPU comes in the mail and I install it to improve the speed by a factor of 2.5x, my wife will know what she has been missing, and I am happy to keep another piece of electronics out of the landfill.

It's not the money, but the principle of things. I can add the $200 to the donation I give to St Mary's Food Bank at this time of year.

[target2019]

We're fortunate to have annual electronics recycling nearby. After sanitizing drives, etc., I drive a few miles, and they unload my boxes and devices. It takes a few years of non-use beofre I discard components.

AFAIK, none of this goes into a landfill. But maybe I'm naive.

[NW-Bound]

Quote:

Originally Posted by misshathaway That is one of the first good reasons I have seen for keeping old tech around. It sounds like you had fun doing this project, even if you didn't get to use the original chip programmer. I am learning electronics at the baby level now and when something does not work, which is often, I love the challenge of figuring out why and trying to fix it.

I have quite a few pieces of engineering software that cost a few $K each, and being old they will not run under Win 10. They work fine for me, and I do not need or can justify new versions for a hobby, now that I no longer w*rk.

Some of the new machines, you cannot even install the old Windows versions on them. Supposedly, you can mount a virtual machine (VM) under Win 10, then install the old Windows or any OS like Linux or even old MS-DOS on the VM, but I have not gotten around to play with that. There's so much stuff to play with.

[travelover]

I'm impressed. I thought I was clever pulling the plug out of the wall and reinserting it.

[NW-Bound]

Quote:

Originally Posted by ShokWaveRider ^^^^^^^^^^^^ Be careful NOT to watch that Surgical UV Eprom Eraser in operation. I switched to the fusible link Eproms when they became cheap.

The EPROMs you describe are really UV EPROM, but without a window to allow them to be erased with UV light. This happened at the end of the life cycle of EPROM, and they were cheap enough to be used for mass production and the end users are not going to be able to pull the chips, erase them with UV light, then reprogram them with a chip programmer. These non-windowed EPROMS are call OTP (one-time-programmable). You do not update their content, and just discard them.

The fusible-link ROM came before the UV EPROM, and did not have the same high density.

When I bought the ChipMaster programmer 20 years ago, I was working with EEPROM, which was electrically erasable. A big improvement over the UV erasable EPROM. However, in-circuit reprogramming was not easy to do like the modern flash memory.

Nobody uses anything other than flash memory now. This talk reminds me that I still have a UV light for EPROM erasing somewhere on my shelves.

I have older stuff like vacuum tubes, but they have been up in my attic for 30+ years.

[HFWR]

Quote:

Originally Posted by target2019 I would have bailed at "brick" and spent the $200. But you have more time...

Back in the day, I worked on stuff, both as part of my j*b, and out of necessity.

Now, I just want to hit the frickin’ ON switch, and have whatever gadget “work”. If not, outtahere!

[camfused]

A new CPU may not speed up as much as you think. An SSD drive or more RAM may make more of an impact.

[target2019]

Quote:

Originally Posted by HFWR Back in the day, I worked on stuff, both as part of my j*b, and out of necessity. Now, I just want to hit the frickin’ ON switch, and have whatever gadget “work”. If not, outtahere!

In 2020 I hope to start a new computer project of some type, just to keep up with the tech. Not sure what I'll pick or will go forward with. Probably a good idea just ot upgrade home network for newer standards. Something of interest might grow out of that.

[MRG]

Quote:

Originally Posted by camfused A new CPU may not speed up as much as you think. An SSD drive or more RAM may make more of an impact.

All computers wait at the same speed.