Toshiba Satellite L10w-B-102 BIOS

[Dannyx]

Good day folks. I'd like to ask for a bit of help with this laptop here. I don't have it in front of me right now, but from what my colleague describes, it's not always turning on and even when it does, it doesn't actually display anything - just the power LED stays on. Other times, it doesn't turn on at all. He's a tech himself so he knows about some of this stuff, though he hasn't yet measured power rails and other stuff because he believes it's the BIOS and he asked me to have a look at it too. It could indeed be the BIOS, no arguing there, so I'd like to try it nonetheless.

I did find something from Toshiba themselves which looks like a BIOS: it's an "upgrade" tool called "skvuv100" which I then unpacked deeper and deeper with 7-zip and I managed to find a ROM filed named MA20100 which is 5Mb in size...could this be it ? :| By digging even further, I also found a MA20_TXE which is 8 Mb in size, so if my limited knowledge of laptop BIOSes is correct, we've got both a "KBC" and a "MAIN" here, so the 8Mb TXE is probably what I'm interested in.

I've attached both a picture of the label and the tool I found straight off the website, with nothing extracted, nothing fudged with...you can use 7 zip to crack it like I did... as always, thanks for the help and tips

[piernov]

Re: Toshiba Satellite L10w-B-102 BIOS

TXE is like ME region but for Intel Atom lineup.
Post the original dump and get the motherboard model number so we can see what's going on.

[SMDFlea]

Re: Toshiba Satellite L10w-B-102 BIOS

PSKVUE is the short part number. Heres the full bios, but might need your bios backup to extract the win 8 key from .

[Dannyx]

Re: Toshiba Satellite L10w-B-102 BIOS

Thanks for the help guys, really appreciated. I shall mess around with it some more once I actually get my hands on it.

[Dannyx]

Re: Toshiba Satellite L10w-B-102 BIOS

Ok guys, here's the situation: today I worked on this laptop hands-on and it's going to be a hard one to crack because it may not be BIOS-related at all.

The symptoms are pretty diverse, so I'll try to explain as many of them as possible in one go: when you plug in the wall adapter, without the battery connected, and press the power button on the side, the white power light next to it goes on, then it goes off, then comes back on again and this time stays on, but the screen stays blank all throughout. This is where it starts to get confusing: this white light could be a blink code, but I could find no solid evidence of what it means, because the number of times it comes on and goes off seems to differ depending on what peripherals I connect to the main board, like the battery, the touchpad, even the wi-fi card. All these seem to alter the blink pattern in some way. With everything connected, I was able to narrow it down to 3 blinks before it finally stays solid...again, it could be a coincidence, though I doubt it.

About the BIOS: I uploaded what I grabbed off the original IC that's on there, which is a 25Q64FWSIG, but I think I may have made an f-up AGAIN (see here) because this is a 1.8v device and I read it on my CH341 without inserting the 1.8v adapter as well.....ironically, it didn't complain at all: as you can see, I got the contents, so the software identified it perfectly fine, programmed fine, erased fine, everything seemed perfect. Either it miraculously survived, or I misinterpreted the datasheet and it's indeed rated for 3.3v ! To make things even more confusing as to how this was possible, the 8th pin of the chip, which is VCC, indeed reads 1.8v on the board, which again opens up the possibility of this being a faulty BIOS indeed after I f-ed up the chip. It was getting late and I didn't have other chips on hand, so I didn't try it via the 1.8v adapter too, but I will, this time paying closer attention.

About the board: here's the model. I also noticed a smaller ATMLH IC on the other side which is probably the ME ? Not sure if it plays a part in this. Some quick measurements around the board on various DC-DC converters revealed the values you'd expect: 5v, 3.3v, 1.8v and even 0.7v which is most likely CPU_VCORE, since it's present on two polarized caps near it. Sadly I took my pics with the heat spreader still on, so you can't really see under there, but you're not missing much - the model is on the bottom. Thanks for any help. Really appreciated.

[piernov]

Re: Toshiba Satellite L10w-B-102 BIOS

Turning on/off/on/off/on can be a CMOS reset behaviour, after unplugging all sources of power. Some boards don't do it at all, some do it once, or more. But it should do keep the same behaviour each time you unplug all power.

25Q64FWSIG is indeed a 1.8V chip. It may not die right away when you apply 3.3V, but it's not safe and it shouldn't behave properly.

It's better to always take heatsink off. You never know what you can find under there. (like burnt components or cracked die)

The other ROM may be a firmware for some other controller.
ME region is in the SPI ROM you dumped. Actually looking at your dump with UEFITool, the ME region should be more or less fine, but BIOS region is corrupted.

[Dannyx]

Re: Toshiba Satellite L10w-B-102 BIOS

It's better to always take heatsink off. You never know what you can find under there. (like burnt components or cracked die)

I DID remove it eventually, but took the picture before I did that. No visible signs of damage. All nice and clean upon first inspection.

This is interesting

ME region is in the SPI ROM you dumped. Actually looking at your dump with UEFITool, the ME region should be more or less fine, but BIOS region is corrupted.

So there is still hope....maybe, because you're saying the original dump looked bad. So this "UEFITool" is similar to the AMIBCP tool ? It would be interesting to see what the current ROM that's on the chip looks like (it should be "clean" and look exactly like the one provided by SMDFlea, since that's what I uploaded to it - unless it got busted by the fact that I forced it on 3.3v)...will definitely push on with this. The other idea was to use the one I extracted from the update file on Toshiba.

[piernov]

Re: Toshiba Satellite L10w-B-102 BIOS

Ah my bad, just looked at @SMDFlea file, it shows up the same in UEFITool. Maybe a bug on my end
Looking with hex editor, the BIOS region is mostly the same (except that @SMDFlea file doesn't have NVRAM data which is to be expected), and there are some differences in the ME region. Normal in the EFFS partition, but there are some other differences, dunno if it's normal or not.
May still be worth it to try with a clean file.


EDIT: got the latest version of UEFITool, now it shows up, still some parsing errors but better, so yeah was a bug in an older version, false alarm sorry.

[SMDFlea]

Re: Toshiba Satellite L10w-B-102 BIOS

The bios i posted is the correct one ,based on the model number . I noticed on one of your pictures an inductor needs resoldering.

http://uk.dynabook.com/support/drivers/laptops/

[Dannyx]

Re: Toshiba Satellite L10w-B-102 BIOS

Great. Thank you for your patience to locate that site - the one I got mine from looked slightly different, plus the model was not right, since my file is SKVUV instead of SKVUE, so I might go again, this time with the 1.8v adapter as well. If not, it means something else is busted, so I need to locate schematics and do it a whole other way.

Also, don't worry about that component - it's just a mangled piece of golden metal. I too freaked out when I saw it at first, but then upon closer inspection I concluded it's nothing of concern

[Dannyx]

Re: Toshiba Satellite L10w-B-102 BIOS

Alright guys, here's the situation: laptop's still not working and this time I think I've done everything correctly. I had the proper PSKVUE BIOS and the 1.8v adapter, but the behaviour's the same: it cycles a few times before staying "on" but doing nothing. There's something messed up in there for sure, since the power indicator next to the DC jack doesn't always come on when you plug the adapter in. Other times, the "charge" indicator doesn't com on, so yeah, something wrong in there...

[Dannyx]

Re: Toshiba Satellite L10w-B-102 BIOS

Ok guys, I managed to bring this one back to life again. Turns out it wasn't a BIOS issue to begin with - I reflowed the CPU and it started working again. I kinda got the idea to try it after doing some measurements and seeing that all the power rails come on, but still nothing happens. I'm aware it's not a permanent fix, but still...it lived another day. Thank you for your help