Carnival of Wank

I’ve made slight progress with the BIOS issue on my A110 Aspire One. After performing a Recovery Flash (as described here) with the original BIOS (v3109), and using the following switches, I’ve been able to get another error! Unfortunately, even if I use the /n switch with the flashit.exe program, the machine reboots and the only way I was able to clearly see the error was to record it with my iPhone. The command and error are as follow:

flashit zg5_3307.fd /a /c /n

Error: IHISI 14h read comapre fail after write. Address: FFF00000

Note: That’s no typo – the error actually spells it comapre instead of compare.

The nearest I can tell is that at one point, I did an crisis recovery with the original BIOS version (3109) after having upgraded to a newer version, and that corrupted the Bootblock to a degree. Next step: dump the current BIOS to disk, then compare them and see what’s what.

Edit: It should be noted that the /a and /b switches for flashit.exe aren’t documented in the help for it (flashit /?). There appears to be a /f switch, but I’m not sure of it’s effects. Time to do a little digging as to what other switches are supported.

So if anyone is wondering what to get me for Christmas (yes, I’m fully aware that there are all of about four people who read this who know who I am), you may want to consider this.

Just sayin’.

Flying cars do indeed suck

I don’t know how I’ll ever live this one down. I really don’t.

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Okay United States, don’t fuck this up. You’ve got the man for the job, now let him do his thing. Deep South, I’m looking in your direction.