I've had 0 issues sending in boards for repair and have never had any "in" warranty. I guess it depends who you talk to?
This has been true of Supermicro... Up until 2019/2020 era. I guess they have cracked down on old crap. LOL
What's the repair thing you're talking about? Source?
You get one of these:
And connect it like this to a Raspberry Pi:
And then you flash it like this:
Code:
$ flashrom -p [path-to-GPIO-SPI-interface] -w ~/my-bios-file.bin
Profit.
Yeah yeah, I over-simplified... LOL There are many many MANY guides out there for flashing. Basically, you want to READ (dump) any existing binary to a file. (-r parameter). And then, flash any raw binary file.
There are no safety checks. There are no validations. This is a raw write byte-for-byte to anything you are flashing. IOW, this is how you get around manufacturers that don't want you modding a bios.
A quick ddg brings up this first link, which looks pretty decent with a 10 second glance:
In this post I will describe how to program a flash chip using the SPI interface on your Raspberry Pi. Continue to read the post to learn how.
tomvanveen.eu
You can use this process for any SOIC8 and SOIC16 chip (AsRock Rack likes to use SOIC16 chips for all BMC, and some BIOS chips).
Actually, you can use this process for just about any SPI IC flash chip (because, that's what they are - just raw binary flash IC chips that store data for the BIOS to read when it turns on).
I've done binary files from kid's toys (oh yeah, I hacked a couple LeapFrog stuffed animals! lol), old frig that had the annoying "Unauthorized Water Filter" crap, to an e-bike that a cousin had.
Really handy tools... Just, get the REAL SOIC8/SOIC16 clips. Not the cheap Chinese fakes.
There are also USB-to-SPI break-out boards, if you dare to do so on a PC (I'm only on linux, so I can't say what quality they are). I personally use a stripped down RPi image, with an 18650 inline battery module (aka Adafruit) - so there is zero chance of anything disturbing the binary write, including a flicker of power.
I'd offer to take the board and fix it; but, I have zero use for X9 (and X10 these days). Trying to get rid of stuff myself!