Review on SMAKN Programmer CH341A Burner EEPROM by Dante Black

Please see some tips that may help. The chip I had to program was a Winbond called 25Q128FVIQ (or W25Q128FVIQ) for a Z170 ASUS motherboard. Initial attempts resulted in BIOS write errors with a readback check showing inconsistent content, and the motherboard was even more bricked than before (absolutely nothing when powered on). But I finally solved the problem by switching to an OLD version of the programming software! Here's what I found. Super old versions like 1.13 were useless because they don't even contain my BIOS model which is a bigger 128 megabit chip than older software versions could support. Newer versions like 1.29 worked, but caused validation errors (once written, the content read did not match what was supposed to be written). Eventually version 1.18 went into production, an older version that listed 128 megabit chips. One place you can find it is if you find the video Installing Drivers for USB Bios CH341A Chip Programmer (Black Edition) by: NSC and check the description for references to Mega. After using this version, the motherboard was stuck in the brick, the BIOS update cycle (the previous owner probably turned off the power during the update) started immediately with the latest BIOS version, and no updates need to be done. Just like that, he turned a cheap "brick" motherboard into a working one!