I recently encountered a BIOS issue with my Acer M3970 (motherboard IPISB-VR). It started acting strangely, like enabling the RAID controller without my input, even after clearing the CMOS. Eventually, it failed completely, leaving me with a black screen.
My plan now is to flash a clean BIOS using the SPI header on the motherboard. After identifying the correct pinout and connecting it to my Raspberry Pi, I used flashrom to detect and dump the current BIOS image.
The problem I'm facing is that the only available BIOS I could find is from WayBack, as Acer removed it from their site. It's a slightly updated version, which should be fine, but it's only 2.5MB while my original BIOS image was 4.0MB. I'm unsure if the file is compressed or if I need to merge it with another image, which might not be feasible since my current BIOS image is likely corrupt.
I'm also open to using the previous BIOS version (P03-A1) since it supports Ivy Bridge and USB 3.0, but unfortunately, I haven't been able to locate it.
I'm currently at a standstill and would greatly appreciate any advice or guidance from those with expertise in this area.
My plan now is to flash a clean BIOS using the SPI header on the motherboard. After identifying the correct pinout and connecting it to my Raspberry Pi, I used flashrom to detect and dump the current BIOS image.
The problem I'm facing is that the only available BIOS I could find is from WayBack, as Acer removed it from their site. It's a slightly updated version, which should be fine, but it's only 2.5MB while my original BIOS image was 4.0MB. I'm unsure if the file is compressed or if I need to merge it with another image, which might not be feasible since my current BIOS image is likely corrupt.
I'm also open to using the previous BIOS version (P03-A1) since it supports Ivy Bridge and USB 3.0, but unfortunately, I haven't been able to locate it.
I'm currently at a standstill and would greatly appreciate any advice or guidance from those with expertise in this area.
Code:
Windbond flash chip "W25Q32.V" (4096 kB, SPI)
Current BIOS: P03-A1 bricked.bin 4.0MB 02.17.2012
WayBack BIOS: P03-A3 P03-A3.ROM 2.5MB 04.18.2012