How to downgrade to 32bit Bios vom 64bit Bios (v16)

geegee

I have updated the bios to V16 aka the 64 bit bios which can boot uefi64 only.

Now I would like to downgrade back to the v12 which I saved as 8mb rom file.
As I can no longer boot DOS I need to manage this from
- a windows 10 64bit installation
- a running debian 8
- the efishell

I found a 64bit version of the efi-flash tool in Aptio_V_AMI_Firmware_Update_Utility.zip from ami.com.
Does anyone know if I can use the tool and how? I fear that it will flash 4mb only but it need to flash all 8mb.


What is the official way to downgrade to a 32bit bios, please?

@Beelink: can you provide a bios that boots both 32 and 64 bit uefi, please?

dcarson83

geegee, I was able to flash the bios from xubuntu, so you should be able to from debian. I am using the Z83... but I believe the hardware is all the same. I flashed from 32bit to 64bit.

I used flashrom. You can test and make sure the ROM chip is support by it by doing the below commands.

# flashrom --programmer internal
Will tell you what type of rom is in use
# flashrom --programmer internal -L | grep CHIPNAMEfrompreviouscommand
Use the model that was in the previous listing. If you see that it says it can Read and Write you should be gold.
# flashrom --programmer internal -c "CHIPNAME" -r backup_CHIPNAME.bin
this backups the rom
# flashrom --programmer internal internal -c "CHIPNAME" -w newbios.bin
This writes a rom file.

Their link for the 32bit BIOS seems to take you to the wrong place... but if you go to the 32bit Windows image link https://mega.nz/#F!fM0XlDiY!u6RJtKZHxYAXwl1uzLQnPw and go to the BIOS folder then 8M_BIN_File you can find the bin for 32bit uefi.


I don't see any reason why it shouldn't work to flash it back since it worked to flash it to 64bit. Though I'm sure you know flashing the BIOS can be risky, since if you loose power or do something wrong you could brick your device.

geegee

Great, that worked very well.
I had backed up  v12 32bit bios as 8MB-file and restored it successfully.

Under Debian 8 it was necessary to download and compile the latest  of the flashrom-tool from flashrom.org as the version from debian did not know the flashrom-chip yet.
  
Building was easy: apt-get source -b flashrom
downloaded the old source BUT made sure that all the prerequisite packages were installed.
After that I could extract the downloaded source from flashrom.org and compile it with a simple "make".

THANKS!!!

I'm now back to the 32bit bios v12 which boots windows x86 fine as well as debian with 32bit-uefi-grub.
There are three problems with bios v12:
- the computer does not shut off after a "halt"
- linux does only boot when grub has been set as primary bootloader in the bios. It will hang on loading initrd-image if you either press F7 to select grub or if you run another bootloader like rEFInd to boot grub or the kernel
- you can not reboot properly. Linux will hang at the smae point where the initial ramdisk is being loaded after a reboot. One can only boot it when the system performs a cold start (remove power cable, plug in again).

I hope that Beelink will provide a fixed bios, maybe a v17 that brings
- the features as v16 like no hangs with linux on halt/reboot
- 32 bit as well as 64bit uefi compatibility
- control of the thermal throttling settings of the cpu.

pdionisis

Can you tell us the chip name ?
I will try to get a BIOS chip programmer to flash new BIOS since I get no support from Beelink
Alternatively you can send me e-mail at pdionisis@gmx.net

rottgrub

geegee replied at 2016-08-16 20:34
Great, that worked very well.
I had backed up  v12 32bit bios as 8MB-file and restored it successful ...

Any chance you could post a download link to that v12 32bit bios? I forgot to back mine up when updating to 64 bit, and only v11 is up from Beelink.

Thanks!

geegee

are you still looking for the V12 bios for the beelink Z83 or BT3??

Tree

Hi All, can you help me please? I have Z83-V (2GB/32GB/HDMI+VGA) with 64bit UEFI. The system is bootable only with 64bit OS, but I need to install Win10 32 bit (for more free ram, more free space of MMC...). Probably I need new UEFI bios for 32bit, can you send me please it (with update utility) to ivanjal@seznam.cz . Thank you very much, IJ