Looking for Medion Akoya P4020D (MS-7621) BIOS to use for recovery

Now sorted - I found someone on YouTube with the same machine and they kindly emailed me their BIOS image. Installed it this evening, and it's all back up and running again.

If anyone else finds themself in the same position, PM me if you need the same image.

nicovde wrote: »

I have the same problem i flashed the motherboard with the bios of Medion. the system is dead only the fans are running. the motherboard is ms-7621 ver 2.1. so if you can help me please do.

Are you in Dublin? If so, you're welcome to head over to the house here and I can use my SPI programmer to reload the original BIOS.

Otherwise, you could have a go at doing it yourself. The programmer was about €30 imported from the US. I bought mine on eBay from here:

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/290505181360

But there are lots of sellers offering variations on it, probably at better prices. You need the third cable -- 8-pin jumper pins, 2mm, for smaller SPI headers, to connect to the MS-7621 motherboard.

If you're having a go yourself, PM me separately and I can provide the original BIOS image you need to load onto it.

nicovde wrote: »

how do i pm you separately. and i'am not in Dublin iam in the netherlands.

Hi, PM sent with details.

Okay, after some emailing and Skype back and forth with @nicovde, he now has his system working again.

We discovered a couple of additional points that might be useful for anyone else trying to get this working.

The Blackcat software will NOT auto-detect the 1 MB flash chip on the MSI motherboard. However, if you go to the SPI tab and switch to manual settings, then just change the default size from 0x20000 to 0x100000, everything else should be fine.

You should also set the clock divider to something slower than 8 MHz, since ribbon cables aren't always the best for high-speed signals. A divider of 16 or 32 should be plenty fast enough.

Originally, we had SO and SI connected back to front, and were only getting zeros when we attempted to read from the flash. We eventually switched them around, and suddenly everything sprung into life.

For clarity, here is the exact pin wiring that worked:

BlackCat      Color      JSPI1 
   #1         Green       #7 (GND) 
   #2         Grey        #1 (VCC) 
   #3         - 
   #4         Orange      #3 (SI) 
   #5         - 
   #6         Purple      #4 (SO) 
   #7         - 
   #8         Yellow      #6 (SCK) 
   #9         - 
   #10        Blue        #5 (CS)

Hopefully this will help anyone else trying this themselves.

Edit: @nicovde reminded me that in addition to the above, while we were experimenting, we also switched from SPI Mode #0 to SPI Mode #3 in the Blackcat SPI setup. While most flash chips will work with either mode, it's no harm mentioning, just in case it's significant for the MSI flash chip. (I believe it's a 1 MB Winbond W25Q80, but the writing on the chip itself is too hard to make out.)

Gemew wrote:

Can you please help me with the right Bios and the steps to do it without the blackcat SPI ?

PM sent, but basically, you'll have a hard time recovering the system without some form of SPI programmer.

(You could potentially de-solder the BIOS chip -- it's only 8 pins -- then mount it in a socket and re-program it using a PC with a proper socketed BIOS by hot-swapping the chips while the PC was powered up, but it's a heck of a lot less risk to just get an SPI programmer.)

I presume the 4011 is very similar to the 4010 which I have. Yes, it's a real pain being able to see the SPI header through the expansion panel, but not *quite* reach it.

Opening the case was a bit fiddly, it mostly just took some nerve.

From memory, I removed all the obvious screws at the back and bottom; I think there may have been a couple behind some of the rear panels also.

Then it was a case of using a thin flat blade screwdriver to prise off the plastic surround. If you start at the underneath area (near where the centre power button is, though closer to either corner), you can get a start on it. There are lots of plastic clips holding it on all the way around, about every 2 inches or so; each time you get one to pop out, you can advance a bit further. If you take it slowly, you should be fine. I think I broke one of them in the process but didn't affect anything badly when I reassembled it later.

Good luck!

hard60 wrote: »

Thanks a lot for your posts here. And the Link to the Bios. I used this Bios.

I made a description (in German) with Pictures off Opening the case and Flashing the Bios.
You can find it on my Page "berger-langenberg.de" under "PC-Tips"

That's great - I'm delighted you got your system working again!

Thanks for posting the update guide also. For the benefit of other readers, here are the links to your guides:

PC Tips page (in German)

Opening the Medion case (translated)

Updating the BIOS with Blackcat USB (translated)

Tenshot wrote: »

Anyone else tried Windows 10 on the Akoya yet?

Responding to my own thread - it's been running Windows 10 happily for the past 12 months; no real problems.

It's our kitchen computer, so it gets a lot of use during the afternoon/evenings. The touchscreen is still holding up well.