KeeYees SOP8 SOIC8 Test Clip and CH341A USB Programmer Flash for Most of 24 25 Series BIOS Chip with PDF Tutorial

Love this little tool. Wish I had more excuses to use it. A friend locked themselves out of their laptop by setting a BIOS password that they couldn't remember. I cleared the CMOS memory several times, but the password persisted.I did some research and learned that modern laptops don't store BIOS passwords in CMOS. Instead, they are stored in non-volatile memory, such as the eeprom on the BIOS chip itself. Further research indicated that this particular laptop likely used an AMI BIOS implementation, and that the password could likely be decrypted or cleared.I happened to have this tool on hand and was itching for a reason to use it. I had never used a BIOS programmer before, so I read a few guides, identified the BIOS chip, and downloaded and reviewed its datasheet. I booted Ubuntu on another laptop and installed flashrom. I verified that flashrom was compatible with the BIOS chip. I hooked up the clip, and flashrom recognized the chip on the first attempt.I dumped the ROM three times and confirmed the checksums for each dump matched. I used UEFITool and confirmed that I was looking at an AMI BIOS and that the AMITSESetup variable was present. I found a tool on GitHub named AMITSESetup Decryptor & Unlocker that was unable to decrypt the password, but it did clear the password from the ROM dump. I flashed the modified ROM back to the BIOS chip, and much to my surprise I was able to boot the computer with no issues and no BIOS password prompt!

Documentation showed how to plug in I2C flash, but not how to plug in (orient) SPI flash. After I traced out the circuit, I noticed all too late that the orientation was in silk screen on the PCB. Software installed. USB driver did not install first 5 tries, eventually found a version of the USB driver that would install. The clip shorted out the pins on my SOIC8 150mil wide body flash repeatedly even when I was careful, and I am extremely careful (I am a flash memory IC designer). I liked the adapters and sockets and found those valuable. Giving 5 stars due to the extreme low cost.

I would have given this 5 stars but it did not come with instructions or a working link to get them, windows drivers, and the CH341 drivers. Luckily, I watched a few youtube videos that pointed me to the correct drivers and software along with how to setup and configure. I was able to use this product to read and then write an upgraded EEPROM image to my UT201e meter making up to 10K count, DC default vs AC, indefinite backlit and a longer self turn off. If you are good with the above, then by all means get it.

This did the trick but not for the faint of heart. The directions are not the best or most clear, so it took a bit of Googling to fiqured out how to use it for my particular bios eprom. No reason to deduct any stars but it does take detective work and again it is not for the faint of heart or someone looking for plug and play, although I assume the avg user wouldn't buy something like this.My Mobo power was interrupted midway through a bios update and it bricked the mobo! With no bios flashback I had no choice but to use this tool and again it did the trick, awesome little device!

A bunch of people said this requires some modification to make it compatible with 3.3V chips due to a "design flaw" (which i regrettably did because it was easy enough) but they're wrong. What happened is that some idiot with a multimeter saw 5.0V going to the pins and had themselves a freakout without checking amp draw (which is less than a milliamp). And then a bunch of other people including pseudo electronics geniuses started blindly repeating this falsehood, wasting everyone's time.What's important is that the voltage drops to 3.3V without any modification whatsoever when you're actually performing read/write operations on a 3.3V chip. For the reviewers saying not performing the modification fried their 3.3V chip with such a small amp draw, my best guess is that they had the bios in the wrong slot, the pins lined in the wrong order, or the clamp was simply not making good contact as they're notorious for, and after reading a bunch of "must modify or else" comments they probably assumed their chip must have "fried".Electronicsrepairschool on youtube explains the issue quite well. Although his videos are a little long winded for my taste at least he knows what he's talking about.I flashed 2 winbond motherboard bioses, one with the mod and one without and both processes worked just fine. I did not use the clamp because all indications are that it's a bit flakey and the 2 chips i flashed were the removable kind.