Panasonic CF-53 BIOS reads all "F's"???

[REO51ST]

I am trying to read the BIOS of a Panasonic CF-53 MK-2. When using the PROG all I see is all f’s. I can boot with W2GO and use AMI 4 to read the BIOS fine. I can then use that file with a HEX editor to locate the location in the NVRAM of the password. I can then insert all 00’s and save. But when trying to flash the clean file it errors. Both with the PROG and the under Windows.

Has anyone else come across this and is there a way to bypass this.

Thanks for any help.
Best regards,
REO

[ArT]

You should have some data, not all 0xFF - it means that your read is not correct.
What chip is it exactly? Which device do you selecting? Do you programming in circuit or in adapter?

[REO51ST]

Sorry for not getting back earlier.

We are trying to read the N25Q128A13.

I have learned to adjust the voltage on some to be able to read them.

But on some units it will only read "F"s

Same chip but unreadable.

Could Panasonic have set something to make some BIOS chips unreadable???

We read the chip in circuit.

Any help would be appreciated.

[ArT]

If you are reading in circuit you can try to decrease speed (settings -> hardware -> sck 50% or 10%). If it not help it may be issue in different place, e.g. bus conflict and 0xff effect will be the same (please check manual Chapter 5 for more possible issues and possible solutions).

Does programmer pass hardware test?

Have you tried to programm it in adapter directly plugged to programmer socket? It has to work everytime for this chip.