I have a GDP pocket laptop that I bricked, I had installed a special development bios with all options unlocked, then, hoping to disable USB3 I proceeded to disable all USB. And a cautionary note, never disable USB on a laptop where all devices are USB. laptop was now completely useless.
First thing I found out was the GDP pocket has no bios clear function(header or equivalent). I found one comment in a forum where somebody also had hard bios problems and was able to reflash it with an external programmer. Worth a try, So I bought a cheap programmer, level shifter, soic clip kit off amazon. and.... nothing was working, at this point not knowing if I was doing it wrong or if the process was even possible I sort of abandoned it. And the carcass sat on the healing bench for a year.
Prompted by the bag of parts on the bench and stumbling on another comment on how miserable shitty cheap soic clips are, I bought a good clip, carefully wired it up, and it flashed first try. plugged the battery back in and the infernal thing booted right up, it still had a charge.
So it is possible to reflash a pc firmware(bios) with an external programmer, probably best to remove the chip, but that is not always necessary. and if it is a soic package, get a good clip, I am happy to name drop Pomona electronics for making a quality product that actually worked and saved my little laptop. https://www.pomonaelectronics.com/products/test-clips/ic-tes...
userbinator 8 hours ago [-]
The trick is to do a few reads and compare to make sure you're getting the same data every time; and only then do the write. I have not had any problems with the cheap clips this way, but reading first and verifying is always recommended regardless.
lazyweb 19 hours ago [-]
Out of curiosity, why disable USB3 at all?
toast0 18 hours ago [-]
Not the OP, but USB3 can interfere with wireless communications (wireless mice seem highly susceptible). I've had some devices/cables/connections where usb3 was unreliable, and it would be better to use usb2 at much slower speeds.
somat 17 hours ago [-]
I was trying openbsd and the xhci driver was dropping the external usb drive I had the system on crashing it, The vague hope was that forcing ohci would make the it stable enough to use.
NitpickLawyer 1 days ago [-]
I think the golden "catch 22" error will forever be the classic "No keyboard detected, press F1 to continue".
petschge 24 hours ago [-]
I always read that as "I'm not detecting a keyboard. If I'm wrong about that let me know by hitting F1. (And if I'm right I don't want to waste time by booting, because you'll have to power down to fix this anyways.)" Because that was in the time before keyboards were hotpluggable.
nubinetwork 21 hours ago [-]
Some early computers with a key toggled the keyboard power, rather than preventing someone from turning off the power switch... I guess it was more important to keep people from typing things than it was keeping the system powered up. The 80s and early 90s were weird times. /shrug
dnpls 23 hours ago [-]
Sound logic. Personally, I have never come across that error when a keyboard was connected.
ivraatiems 16 hours ago [-]
I refurbish these old Thinkpads sometimes. They're tough to work with but I love the little flapping duck and the whimsical BIOS design. A simpler program from a simpler era.
Rendered at 08:56:21 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
First thing I found out was the GDP pocket has no bios clear function(header or equivalent). I found one comment in a forum where somebody also had hard bios problems and was able to reflash it with an external programmer. Worth a try, So I bought a cheap programmer, level shifter, soic clip kit off amazon. and.... nothing was working, at this point not knowing if I was doing it wrong or if the process was even possible I sort of abandoned it. And the carcass sat on the healing bench for a year.
Prompted by the bag of parts on the bench and stumbling on another comment on how miserable shitty cheap soic clips are, I bought a good clip, carefully wired it up, and it flashed first try. plugged the battery back in and the infernal thing booted right up, it still had a charge.
So it is possible to reflash a pc firmware(bios) with an external programmer, probably best to remove the chip, but that is not always necessary. and if it is a soic package, get a good clip, I am happy to name drop Pomona electronics for making a quality product that actually worked and saved my little laptop. https://www.pomonaelectronics.com/products/test-clips/ic-tes...