[Soekris] net45xx BIOS v1.31b - Bricked net4511s

[William Franzin]

Hi everyone,
 
I have a couple of net4511's that had BIOS v1.23 flashed, with spare
time this morning I thought.. why not update them to the current version
v1.31b. Well, it turns out that bricked both of them. The first one
failed to boot after the flash was applied. I double-checked everything
and flashed the second box, and bricked it too.
 
To provide some background - I do have some experience flashing Soekris
boards. Over the past few years I've flashed around 30 net4501's and a
couple of other net4511's, all 100% successful. I used Hyperterminal on
WinXP (and have used Hyperterm on Win2k or XP in the past too). 
 
>From the Soekris Website http://www.soekris.com/downloads.htm I
downloaded the BIOS file
b4501_131b.bin <http://www.soekris.com/Software/b4501_131b.bin>
net45xx BIOS release version 1.31b, for upgrading version 1.20 and newer
 
Here's what happened:
 
comBIOS ver. 1.23  20031119  Copyright (C) 2000-2003 Soekris
Engineering.
 
net45xx
 
0032 Mbyte Memory                        CPU 80486 101 Mhz
 

PXE-M00: BootManage UNDI, PXE-2.0 (build 082)
 
Slot   Vend Dev  ClassRev Cmd  Stat CL LT HT  Base1    Base2   Int
-------------------------------------------------------------------
0:00:0 1022 3000 06000000 0006 2280 00 00 00 00000000 00000000 00
0:09:0 104C AC50 06070002 0107 0210 10 3F 02 A0000000 020000A0 10
0:18:0 100B 0020 02000000 0107 0290 00 3F 00 0000E101 A0001000 11
 

comBIOS Monitor.   Press ? for help.
 
> ?
comBIOS Monitor Commands
 
boot [drive][:partition] INT19 Boot
reboot                   cold boot
download                 download a file using XMODEM/CRC
flashupdate              update flash BIOS with downloaded file
time [HH:MM:SS]          show or set time
date [YYYY/MM/DD]        show or set date
d[b|w|d] [adr]           dump memory bytes/words/dwords
e[b|w|d] adr value [...] enter bytes/words/dwords
i[b|w|d] port            input from 8/16/32-bit port
o[b|w|d] port value      output to 8/16/32-bit port
cmosread [adr]           read CMOS RAM data
cmoswrite adr byte [...] write CMOS RAM data
cmoschecksum             update CMOS RAM Checksum
set parameter=value      set system parameter to value
show [parameter]         show one or all system parameters
?/help                   show this help
 
> download
 
Start sending file using XMODEM/CRC protocol.
CCCCCCCCCCCCCC
File downloaded succesfully, size 608 Blocks.
 
> flashupdate
Updating BIOS Flash ,,,,..,,,,.. Done.
 
> reboot
 

POST: 012345678
 
No further console output appeared after this point. Power-cycling the
device resulted in no consule output and the power+error LEDs stay on.
Looks like its bricked. I don't believe any mistakes were made flashing
from v1.23 to v1.31b directly, as the note indicates for v1.20 and
newer. Possibly the v1.31b file is corrupt? 
 
The first flash attempt was performed at 9600, the second at 19200.
After Googling I didn't find any quick fixes for this problem or
recovery procedures. Pulling the chip and having it programmed probably
isn't an option, and I don't have a JTAG interface (yet) for these
boards. Any ideas?
 
Thanks,
William
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