Benq Flashing problems

[vaporstone]

I have a Benq drive and Intel ICH8 SATA. My problem is that ive soldered the switch on (yes the traces are cut and soldered properly... checked with volt meter) and when i dump the fw it reads it gets the 0x73 status but the fw dump is always invalid. No matter whether i dump with dosflash, iprep or dosflash in windows i always get the same result.. INVALID BIN... but the bin is 256k.. also the name of the flash in dosflash is MXIC(MX25L2005) instead of the MX25L2005 3.3v... and the datasum is always different..Im aware of the VIA chipset solution.. but im a poor student so I have to make this work... It reads and dumps the fw no problem but toolbox says invalid... now i opened it up with hex editor and the fw version says 64931C now my sticker says 64930c. could that be an issue?
Ive read everywhere and cannot find a solution... help please..

[vaporstone]

well i managed to get the drive to dump and i checked and it was a good dump with the key .. right ver. etc. but now after i reconnected the traces the drive is dead... it loaded a backup with the switch on fine.... so i dont see how anything changed... why would the drive be dead??

[chickenpie]

if it worked with the switch it must be your soldering work over the cut traces...redo it

[vaporstone]

what would cause the drive to be totally dead... ive re-done the soldering many times to no avail.. ive checked all the connections with a volt meter and theyre good ... why would it not even start up or anything

[chickenpie]

well when I done mine I used one of them soldering irons that heat up instantly when you press the button (not sure what there called) but it had a massive tip on it..(someone borrowed my proper soldering iron without asking!) and when I put the drive in it wouldnt eject or anything so i redone the soldering and it worked...I assume I shorted it to ground or something...

[ImmortalZ]

If you went the cut traces route, you must be very careful when bridging them back.

It is very easy to remove the solder mask (the green covering) from the ground planes that surround the power lines when you are cutting the traces. When you bridge them back, stray solder may bridge the power line to ground, which is a recipe for disaster. Use the meter to check whether the trace is bridged to ground after you bridge them back.

[Protonus]

Why would you use this method instead of buying a <$20 shipped Via 6421 based PCI card?
I'd still, regardless reccomend you get said card and try that method. 

[ImmortalZ]

Problem is, he now has to bridge the thing back properly to use the drive anyhow.

[chickenpie]

Why would you use this method instead of buying a <$20 shipped Via 6421 based PCI card?
I'd still, regardless reccomend you get said card and try that method. 

now wheres the fun in that

[Protonus]

Why would you use this method instead of buying a <$20 shipped Via 6421 based PCI card?
I'd still, regardless reccomend you get said card and try that method. 

now wheres the fun in that

Point taken, and I see now that he was trying to do this method to save money but... ya, I can't imagine thinking to myself I have to save $20 and risk breaking my drive and therefore 360.  A replacement drive is going to cost at least $20 shipped and that's assuming that you have the key and can even use another drive, which in this case unfortunatly, it sounds like he can't even get the key now.  I think if you can't set aside $20 to save your 360 from paperweightville that it's more then being poor... 

Again regardless I'd get the VIA 6421 card. Better to try dumping the firmware with a chipset you know you can with, then F with it with a chipset you have yet to have work.  Might be your whole problem is the chipset/setup you're using. I had to F around for quite a while with my 6421 even to get it to flash any of the three makes of drives.  The BenQ was awful strange in what I had to do, I had to do everything manually iPrep would NOT work for me, and next time I have one I'll write up a tut with what I had to do. 

[ImmortalZ]

Why would you use this method instead of buying a <$20 shipped Via 6421 based PCI card?
I'd still, regardless reccomend you get said card and try that method. 

now wheres the fun in that

The BenQ was awful strange in what I had to do, I had to do everything manually iPrep would NOT work for me, and next time I have one I'll write up a tut with what I had to do. 

Same here. None of the established methods worked on my drive. So I opened up the batch files, looked at the commands and did everything manually. I didn't give dosflash16 a port to read from, which let it somehow autodetect my drive. The rest was a piece of cake. Of course there was the time when I managed to plug in the drive power cable upside down and got the thing to RROD - was a bit scary.

[Protonus]

^^ I also had dosflash detect the drive if I didn't tell it anything... but it woul dn't do it on "the first pass" - always the second.  Weird issues.