CWWK Mini PC Bricked. Any way to reload BIOS?

[Roveer]

Recently I got a CWWK N305 Mini PC. Unfortunatly I bricked it with a BIOS update last night while trying to fix a slow ssd problem. Most likely used the wrong BIOS from CWWK since they website is a dumpster fire.

Does anyone know of a way to load a fresh BIOS onto this machine? Im imagining some sort of put the bios on a fat32 usb key, then some series of hold a button while powering on. Ive tried a whole bunch of things with no success. I've emailed support with no response (yet). I figured I'd give it a try before I get rid of this thing. Probably one of the more frustrating PC configs that I've had in a long time. Very flaky device.

Thanks,

Roveer

Alder Lake N305

 

[KevinR]

Someone on one of the main threads recently reflashed a BKHD model using a clip on flash tool. Writing directly to the bios chip. Search CH341a, SPI flash, and posts by binfree here. (though I'm finding forum search isn't setting July posts!)

 

[splifingate]

Do you have a rPi?

Personally, using a ch341a flasher, I have always had extremely mixed (mostly negative) results.

I have since switched to {always} successfully using my rPi4b to re-program spi's

see: How to flash bios chips with Raspberry Pi - #Tom's Weblog

 

[quaker]

Hello,

Yes, I know that it happend almost 6 months ago.

But for future readers, can you remember what board you had (cwwk-n100-4l) v1 or v2? And what wrong version of BIOS you used?

 

[bruce1066]

Hello,

Yes, I know that it happend almost 6 months ago.

But for future readers, can you remember what board you had (cwwk-n100-4l) v1 or v2? And what wrong version of BIOS you used?

I had a similar challenge for a different reason. I had two n305 machines (the 'magic' pc's). They ran windows like a complete dog. Patrick commented on this when he reviewed originally. Cwwk provided a bios upgrade which seemed to improve things. But then a couple of weeks later both machines died within a few minutes of each other - there was a time related bug in their firmware. The machines were unbootable by normal means. So, the instructions from cwwk was to reflash the original firmware (once they sent it to me) and do that with Ventoy - this is the secrete sauce. It was an automatic process once I plugged the usb thumb drive in. Cwwk never did re-publish the updated firmware - so the machines went back to sloooow running with Windows. I swapped them to linux tasks.

 

[quaker]

(...)
So, the instructions from cwwk was to reflash the original firmware (once they sent it to me) and do that with Ventoy - this is the secrete sauce. It was an automatic process once I plugged the usb thumb drive in. Cwwk never did re-publish the updated firmware - so the machines went back to sloooow running with Windows. I swapped them to linux tasks.

So they send you BIOS (probably as ISO). You created VENTOY PENDRIVE, put file on it, plug it into DEAD minipc and after boot magic happend?

 

[bruce1066]

Yup, exactly. Both my computers were dead, both recovered.

 

[quaker]

That very optimistic. I chat with CWWK employe trying to get all information about BIOS upgrade. But was unable to get information why BIOS dated version 2023-11-08 is outdated compared to 2023-09-27 (this version was pointed by support to use).

This minipc is my main router so I need to be prepared for fast recover in case of BIOS update failure.

In bonus I recived info, that BIOS can be updated using ch341 (got it) and clamp (waiting from ali) without desoldering (got pictures, how they do it). I've managed to do backup of current bios (using software) - so I keep my finger crossed and in free time I'll do update.