L530 BIOS mod recovery (bricked?)

[giammi56]

Hi to all of you dear Lthinkers,

I have attempted a BIOS mod for my L530 with the well-know ch341 EEPROM method and not it doesn't turn on any more. It is unresponsive to the power button (no fan starting). I measured voltages across the motherboard (16.8 V and 20.4 V), but the battery is not charging (no LED on the screen and no voltage at the pins).

1. how to check if the keyboard is still working? How could I turn it on without the keyboard?
2. How can I restore the BIOS, even using the EEPROM method?

NOTE: the BIOS I have dumped was almost all ASCII rubbish. Could this be because of the legacy structure?

Thank you!

[RealBlackStuff]

Did you mess with the BIOS or the EEPROM?

[giammi56]

I have messed up the BIOS.
I think that the EEPROM is working good, both on ubuntu 20.04 and windows 10. It is recognized and does all the requested operations.
I have not modified the 3.3 voltage because it seems not a crucial issue.

But how can I check both if the L530 is bricked and if the EEPROM is working correctly?

[RealBlackStuff]

5V on the BIOS/EEPROM is deadly for most.
This might help: http://www.bios-chip24.com/Lenovo-Thinkpad-L530/en
You could also try to boot from a USB BIOS-update.

[giammi56]

geeez do you think I fried it? I can still read 3.3 V between pin 1 and 6 and if I try to read the content of the BIOS, I still get some readable lines among a lot of nothingness in the dump.
How can I boot from USB if the machine doesn't turn on?
I tried several methods to discharge the internal capacitor removing the battery on the mother board, but still nothing.

[giammi56]

Any idea on how to flash the BIOS with a default/genuine new one? perhaps how to extract it from the .exe shipped with the update.

[RealBlackStuff]

Have you tried this ancient IBM-trick?
Remove charger, main batteries, HDD/SSD, CD/DVD, any external items.
Press and hold down the power button for 20 seconds.
Plug in only charger, try to boot.

[giammi56]

I tried to discharge all capacitors, but nothing happened. Is it possible to provoke this just messing up with the content of the BIOS chip? Shouldn´t the laptop at least turn on and not loading anything? I´d love at this point to test the keyboard, but I don´t know how!

[RealBlackStuff]

Did you make a BIOS backup before you started fiddling?
That really is a must-do requirement before you try writing with the likes of CH341A.
If not, find a ready-made BIOS chip such as this: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/172147660435

[giammi56]

As I wrote in my question the first attempt of dumping the BIOS was not successful, but I could switch on the laptop.

NOTE: the BIOS I have dumped was almost all ASCII rubbish. Could this be because of the legacy structure?

Is there a way to extract the BIOS from an official update of LENOVO and flash it to my chip instead of buying a whole new one?

I just bought a 4337 docking station to check if the keyboard is the problem.

[RealBlackStuff]

Updates are just that: an UPDATE.
The BIOS itself contains more data than the update-file, so the answer is NO.
You either have your own backup or buy a new chip to solder in.

[leecher]

Just a quick note, as I also recently had to flash a L530:
The CH341A didn't work for me, (I did the 3.3V mod before attaching it to anything, of course), it was just unable to detect the chip, maybe the CH341A just doesn't have enough power to power the whole circuit including EC properly?
I had success using a Raspberry Pi, if wiring is unclear, I documented it at: https://github.com/leecher1337/thinkpad-Lx30-ec

However, I didn't mess up the whole EC area, so the EC was still able to find its boot code (but failed to load the attached piggyback image due to a CRC error which was my fault), so the EC kept quiet (it only tries to read the piggyback code 3 times before giving up) and didn't spam the bus searching for its firmware.
If you wiped the entire EC area, you may be out of luck and the EC may constantly talk to the bus searching for its firmware.
You can use i.e. piscope on the RaspPi to check for traffic on the data lines in order do find out if this is the issue you are experiencing.
Should this be the case, I fear your only chance is desoldering the chip in order to reflash it.