I ordered the Corebook X (2021, i5-8259U) only yesterday, so I haven’t got my hands on it yet. It hasn’t even shipped in fact.
I’m looking forward to using it, mainly for the screen and form factor.
One other thing that also caught my interest though is that the BIOS (UEFI) settings are all exposed through the setup menu and can be changed. Nothing is hidden by default. This is very good.
I haven’t been able to find much discussion about it though. And I’ve been wondering:
Has anyone been able to obtain a flashable BIOS update from Chuwi? For many people seems the laptop came with version CFL_CM131_U43E_V1.0.5 of 2021-05-08 but some people were also able to update to CFL_CM131_U43E_V1.0.8? Could anyone who has it please share the archive with the update?
What about the EC version? Is 1.04 (of 2021-05-21) the latest?
Separately, has anyone looked into reading or reprogramming the EEPROM with a hardware programmer such as the (in)famous CH341A?
Maybe this has been discussed already somewhere but I’ve looked through all the forum posts in the CoreBook X category and there doesn’t seem to be anything. I’ll keep looking elsewhere but if anyone has anything to share, it’d be great to get to know it.
Basically, I’m interested in anything BIOS-related on this device.
Turned out to be a long post, thanks for making it through!
No problem. I’ve answered what I know about your particular situation in the other thread where you posted the details:
I can only talk about the i5-8529U model, which is what I have. It looks very much the same but in terms of firmware it’s completely different. Some of the following might not apply to the other variants (including yours):
Firmware (BIOS) can be easily read and flashed with Intel FPTW64. There is no protection of any kind. Since FPTW64 works and we don’t have any OEM images, I didn’t test AMI’s AFUWIN64 but it should probably work as well.
Flash chip is XMC XM25QH128C. It’s a bit uncommon but supported by Flashrom in the recent versions. Support is experimental (untested).
I was able to probe and read this chip using Flashrom with a CH341A hardware programmer. I didn’t try erasing or writing.
There are 3 BIOS versions I’ve been able to confirm the existence of:
CFL_CM131_U43E_V1.0.3
CFL_CM131_U43E_V1.0.5 (2021-05-08)
CFL_CM131_U43E_V1.0.8 (2021-05-21)
BIOS version 1.0.8 has EC version V1.04. With the earlier 1.0.5, the EC version string was “090200.1717” (or maybe “902.001.717” – not sure, since I only saw it on a screenshot).
I could not obtain any BIOS dumps shared by other people.
The laptop I got already came with BIOS 1.0.8 / EC 1.04, which seems to be the latest version.
Since everything is already unlocked, I just changed the boot logo and called it a day.
I’ve been experimenting with memory overclocking settings but have been unable to make it run at anything past the default 2400 MT/s, even if the onboard 8GB memory is disabled. This seems to be a CPU/SoC limitation, since the additional memory stick I installed is DDR4-3200, so it can definitely do more. If anyone’s had any success speeding up the memory, I’d be interested to know.
Thus far, I didn’t even play with many of the other settings. But for the record, this variant does have the ability to toggle the Fn key mode: it’s under Advanced → Function Keys Mode in the BIOS and was set to Standard F1-F12 Mode by default.
