pfSense on Watchguard M370

angelroc

Can anyone DM me the unlock password bios please?

BigThx

Squuiid

@angelroc do always read a thread before posting. It’s there in plain sight.
https://forum.netgate.com/post/1067389

FadedRedwood

hey all, i have seen/know the password but does anyone have a copy of the mod/unlocked bios? I really want to flash a m470 and enable speedstep. any information is greatly appreciated!

all the best

towatai

Same here. Got a M670 for free and want to enable speedstep.

stephenw10

You should see speedshift active on there already if the CPU supports it. Pretty sure the default CPU in the M670 does. That's superior to speedstep in almost every way.

v16v

I have a problem with my M370, it starts but shuts down at once. I would need a copy of a bios file if anyone has one.

Thanks in advance.

stephenw10

Anything shown at the console at all? Did it boot previously?

v16v

@stephenw10
Can't get into console because it shuts down. It has worked fine for years but after a power outage it won't start.

stephenw10

But if you have the console open you see nothing at all? No POST output from the BIOS? No errors?

It sounds like a hardware failure. That's what happens if you try to power up without any RAM present for example.

I would try reseating the RAM and CPU.

v16v

@stephenw10
How to reset RAM and CPU?
I think there is something with the bios that is causing it not to boot.

stephenw10

No I said 'reseat' the components. So physically remove and re-fit them. Sometimes you can see bad connections if the unit was moved at all.

v16v

@stephenw10

It was Google Translate that translated it to reset.
Reseat the RAM and CPU, tried another PSU also made no difference.

stephenw10

So, to confirm, you see no output at all at the serial console?

I'm not sure there is any way to recover that. Even it is a bad BIOS. But I would only expect a bad BIOS if you were trying to flash it and it failed.

ost0

@v16v Do you have an SPI Flash reader that you can read the BIOS from your M370 with? The BIOS has checksums for each module so if there's corruption it should be possible to figure out where.

v16v

@ost0
I have a CH341A Flash reader. How do I know what checksums should be for each module?

stephenw10

When you open the BIOS file it should show you.

I still doubt this is a bad BIOS though if you were not trying to modify it when it failed.

v16v

@stephenw10
I said it was after a power outage that it didn't start. The bios reading gave nothing, it was completely blank.

stephenw10

Hmm, are you sure it actually read it? It seems very unlikely it would erase it entirely.

VioletDragon

Remove the RAM, Power on the machine does it beep? if so the machine has some signs of life,

I've re-programmed quite a few BIOS chips, one word of advice, make sure you get the datasheet of the BIOS chip to be sure on the voltage of the EPROM, if its 3v make sure to change the voltage jumper on the CH341A Flash reader. You can damage the EPROM if you put 5v through a 3v EPROM.

If it has two BIOS chips i.e Dual BIOS in some cases it will fall back on the second EPROM chip.

When reading, read twice and verify twice and save the Flash.

Download the BIOS from the manufacturers website be sure to note on the revision as there will be some differences, with some motherboards you will require to copy MAC Address, Serial Number etc from the old BIOS Regions.

Regards

ost0

Completely blank reads could also mean an entirely dead SPI Flash (usually returning nothing but FF's if I recall correctly), if you've got access to a Linux machine and download flashrom, you can check for signs of life by connecting the clip to the SPI and the ch341a and running
sudo flashrom --programmer ch341a_spi --flash-name

With the expected output for a working flash being something like:
Found Winbond flash chip "W25Q128.W" (16384 kB, SPI) on ch341a_spi