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This bricked Eee PC came to [Janzo] for about $50. Everything was fine with it, except for the failed bios update that rendered it useless to the last owner. [Janzo] set to work with an Arduino on a quest to repair the bios. He looked up the datasheet for the EEPROM that stores the bios and did some delicate soldering to gain access to the power and data pins on the device. A bit of trial and error and he was able to read the registers. Some comparisons between the output file and the official Eee PC bios file in a HEX editor confirmed that the first 80 bytes were fine but after that something went wrong. After coding a quick Python script [Janzo] reflashed the chip and had the computer up and running again.
We’ve seen Eee PC bios recovery before. This is a very simple method because it makes use of the simplicity we find in the Arduino. Nice job.
That arduino is totally overkill. He really ought to have whipped up a board in eagle, sent it to china to be etched, placed smt parts, done a second board rev and then flashed the chip.
Instead he did something clever. Nice hack!
I love buying peoples broken laptops from them for $50.
Wow. Nice.
Well done!
yea nature last one I got (for 60) I ended up getting 180 out of it
Sweet.
I wish fixing my EEE was on my skill level…
Hey all you bus pirateers, could this be done with a BusPirate?
Most modern BIOSes including the Eee PC can be recovered from a bad update with a bootable USB drive and the appropriate BIOS file. It’s usually something like Win + B at boot to start it but in the case of Eee PC just having it inserted with the appropriate files works.
Is there some reason this procedure could not be done?
Very cool, way to save some mondo big bucks!
@Pete are you sure? Booting from a USB drive is usually something that you would NEED a bios to be able to do.
@BigBubbaX if it’s not, you could always sell it for $50-$60 to someone here. :-P
I guess the Eee PC doesn’t have fail safe bios? Most modern computers have backup bios for when you mess something up or at least a way of re-flashing a bad bios flash.
It could also be that because of it’s size and it’s design to be an affordable way of computing, that the price and form factor didn’t allow such a luxury.
Brilliant! I admire Janzo’s patience and persistence. I even like the make-shift wire tensioner thing. :)
Great job on recovering someone else’s “junk”!
I love it! Reminds me of the Xbox days in a remote way :)
Pete: Interesting idea! I wish I had broken hardware to try it out. I am just wondering if the floopy or usb controllers are available to even write to the BIOS/ROM? That would be my guess why it may not work for his. Lemme know if anyone gets it to work as this would be great for future ebay purchases :)
Now this is how I like seeing arduinos being used, a multi-purpose programmable problem solv