Bios flashing, protected IC regions

[traveler0091]

Hello everyone,

Guys, need a quick help.
I'm trying to flash my laptop's bios with Clean ME.
Laptop: DELL LATITIDE 5480,
Motherboard: LA-E142P,
BIOS IC: GD25B128C
__

Please see attached image.


The programmer shows the IC has protected regions in SREG1, SREG2, SREG3.. The only one that I can unprotect is the SREG3...

So, is this a problem? Can I flash the BIOS without unlocking the SREGs.
Is this safe to do?

My programmer is CH341.

[mon2]

Re: Bios flashing, protected IC

I think there may be a misunderstanding.

The WEL is greyed out because you DO want to be able to write to the device. This is write-enable-latch.

If this flag is removed or off, the device will be read-only.

QE = quad mode enabled. If the original is with QE bit set, leave it alone here.

[traveler0091]

Re: Bios flashing, protected IC

I think there may be a misunderstanding.

The WEL is greyed out because you DO want to be able to write to the device. This is write-enable-latch.

If this flag is removed or off, the device will be read-only.

QE = quad mode enabled. If the original is with QE bit set, leave it alone here.

Thank you very much for your reply and clarifications.
I apologize for my naive questions. I'm doing this for the first time.
I thought that if I flash it in this state, it might damage the chip.

So, should I leave it as is (selected) and try to flash the IC?

[mon2]

Re: Bios flashing, protected IC regions

You will not damage the ic but if the QE flag is off and the motherboard expects to operate in quad mode then the motherboard will not boot. To me, that is the only variable here. Then you will have to desolder the ic and enable the QE flag to test again.

By default, all SPI bus flash devices operate in single bit or QE=off mode. To gain speed, QUAD mode and even faster modes were introduced to extract the contents faster but both sides of the circuit need to handshake to function.

Suggest to leave QE flag checked. If the motherboard does not use the QUAD mode opcodes, no issue. If the motherboard does use them, this flash chip will respond correctly.

[traveler0091]

Re: Bios flashing, protected IC regions

You will not damage the ic but if the QE flag is off and the motherboard expects to operate in quad mode then the motherboard will not boot. To me, that is the only variable here. Then you will have to desolder the ic and enable the QE flag to test again.

By default, all SPI bus flash devices operate in single bit or QE=off mode. To gain speed, QUAD mode and even faster modes were introduced to extract the contents faster but both sides of the circuit need to handshake to function.

Suggest to leave QE flag checked. If the motherboard does not use the QUAD mode opcodes, no issue. If the motherboard does use them, this flash chip will respond correctly.

I highly appreciate your help and recommendations.
The flashing process was successful!