Dell Latitude 5440 IDB40 LA-M401P reading the Bios-WSON8 UC2

[Thoa]

Hello Community...

I am totaly disappointed, cause i bought a used Dell Latitude 5440 with a cracked display. I ve spend another 50 Euros for the new screen and it does his job very well. Then I reallized that a Bios-Passwort is set. First I bought the CH341A black edition with the clamp and was confidence, that it will do its job, realizing that this does not work. So I decided to buy a pogo-pin-tool to read the UC2 first of all (nothing tried on UC6 Yet). The outcome was very random when reading the WSON 8x6, so I decided to buy the XGecu T48, but it is the same. No reliable data. So my question: Is it possible, that the pogo-pin-tool does not work cause the contact-area is too small?

I hope that I can send a dump of my Bios in near future... Sincerly... Thoa

[mon2]

Personally would consider to invest into a WSON to PDIP adapter board. Is it 8x6 or is 5x6? Believe that Aliexpress will have these. If shopping, there is one or 2 boards you should invest into for the very odd flash packages used on macbooks. Will share the details later and their links. Worthwhile. Then you should be more stable to R/W/E with your growing list of programming tools.

[Thoa]

Personally would consider to invest into a WSON to PDIP adapter board. Is it 8x6 or is 5x6? Believe that Aliexpress will have these. If shopping, there is one or 2 boards you should invest into for the very odd flash packages used on macbooks. Will share the details later and their links. Worthwhile. Then you should be more stable to R/W/E with your growing list of programming tools.

Thx mon2 for your quick answer. But I wanted to avoid get this chip out of his circuit-board, so i would had to buy an hot air-solder-station, too. And I am scared to damage the board.
The XM25RH256C on the Latitude 5520 works very fine. I can read, write and erase the chip as i like even with my CH341A. But dont know, whats wrong with the 5520. I wrote my Problem in the "5520 BIOS Requests only"

The BIOS on the 5440 is on 2 Chips as far as I know.... WSON 8x6 and a little brother right next to him. I leave the little one... First i need to have access to the WSON 8x6.

[mon2]

Found the schematics and see the UC2 bios. With good contacts, you should be able to R/W/E this device. I would definitely make sure that you can dump the ID registers with reliability and then perform a few full dumps before erasing what you have today inside of this device. To me, the device does not look to be anything special.

Have your configured the flash device parameters to be in QSPI mode or is it standard SPI mode? The pinout implies that the device is operating in QSPI mode = 4 lines of data are shifted upon each clock cycle.

[Thoa]

Found the schematics and see the UC2 bios. With good contacts, you should be able to R/W/E this device. I would definitely make sure that you can dump the ID registers with reliability and then perform a few full dumps before erasing what you have today inside of this device. To me, the device does not look to be anything special.

Have your configured the flash device parameters to be in QSPI mode or is it standard SPI mode? The pinout implies that the device is operating in QSPI mode = 4 lines of data are shifted upon each clock cycle.

OK. That could be the reason, why it does not work. I used Xgpro, AsProgrammer and NeoProgrammer so far, but i cannot find any option for QSPI. In none of those 3 Programs.

[m1ch43lzm]

On the Xgpro software lower the SPI clock frequency to 8MHz when using the clip/pogo pin, make sure you're holding the pogo pin adapter steadily, or maybe get someone to help either holding the pogo pin adapter in place, or clicking Read in the software, you have to hold steady for around 3 minutes, maybe more while reading/writing due to slower clock frequency



When saving the file, make sure to select FLASH on the "Select buffer" option, like this, otherwise the dump will have additional bytes at the end, should be exactly 33554432 bytes



Also try reading selecting XM25RH256C* @WSON8 (with asterisk) variant, don't know what the difference is, make at least 3 dumps each time, and compare them with hex editor, should be identical

[Thoa]

I have already tried with lower clock speed. Tryed XM25RH256C now, too... everything without results. I also have to uncheck the "Check ID"-Checkbox, even if I ve chosen W25Q256FV. When I do the flash-detect, there are around 10 Chips to select and the ID is shown (EF 40 90). But when I try to read it, it says

Check-ID Error
Checked ID is 0 x 00 00 00

I dont think anymore the issiue is a contact-problem, as Xgpro passes the pin detection.

[SMDFlea]

I have already tried with lower clock speed. Tryed XM25RH256C now, too... everything without results. I also have to uncheck the "Check ID"-Checkbox, even if I ve chosen W25Q256FV. When I do the flash-detect, there are around 10 Chips to select and the ID is shown (EF 40 90). But when I try to read it, it says

Check-ID Error
Checked ID is 0 x 00 00 00

I dont think anymore the issiue is a contact-problem, as Xgpro passes the pin detection.

Don`t use flash-detect ,choose it yourself

[Thoa]

Yes... But i have to uncheck IDCheck anyway. And i do not get a reliable outcome, too. Sometimes there is some data, but no nice bios-uefi-file

[mon2]

Do not proceed till you can read the IDs inside of the flash device with stability. Even if the flash register for QSPI is enabled, the default standard SPI commands will work but QSPI will be much faster to read out. On this note, the lead lengths, QSPI clock speed will impact the quality of the content reads. We did some testing a number of years back and found a large variance of flash devices and how they operate at high data rates in QSPI mode. Summary was that some vendors have hidden registers for a pin drive strength to push out the data. I recall that SPANSION flash was capable of operating at very high data rates where WINBOND was not. After approaching WINBOND (Taiwan), they sampled us another variance of their part that came close to the SPANSION specs.

On this note, watch the clock speed and remain in standard SPI mode and then read back the IDs for the part. This is general advice for any flash device. If you cannot do this with stable results then your pogo contacts are not working. Try again.