Firmware upgrade using Linux tool, requires no hardware

[Chief Blur Buster]

This does seem more interesting to purchase a 2411z or a 2420z now. Unfortunately, I don't really understand a lot of this terminology haha.

There will be a special Blur Busters article to cover all the special terminology (persistence, strobe crosstalk, vertical totals).

What matters is the motion clarity you get with LightBoost (the predecessor to newer optimized blur reduction technologies such as BENQ Blur Reduction, ULMB and Turbo240), which you can see in PHOTOS: 60Hz versus 120Hz versus LightBoost as well as LightBoost testimonials. This kind of stuff is why people buy strobe backlights nowadays in the best gaming monitors found in the Official 120Hz Monitor List.

If you want to do Amazon, there are XL2411Z, XL2420Z and XL2720Z on Amazon. Currently, as of May 2014, reports have been coming in that monitors shipped from USA and Canada are now consistently Version 2 monitors, so you are not very likely to need to upgrade them. And if you do, there's now several methods you can do to upgrade, including this free Linux method, which is great!

[ziConiCz]

Hello everyone here at Blur Busters.

I just managed to sucessfully flash my XL2720Z to firmware v2 using pipomolo42's tool and I really wanna give my thanks to him and to everyone who helped along the way, including Bishi for tearing it down for me, a complete linux n00b and of course Chief Blur Buster for providing the utility

So anyone who wants to try it do it, I just saved 50$ and can now use Blur Busters Strobe Utility. Now I can see the real potential of Blur Reduction.

Thank you again everyone!!

[Darryl]

Hi everyone and a big thank you to pipomolo42 and everyone else that contributed to this thread.

Successfully flashed my XL2420Z to V2 using the method in the blog and the screen does look amazing using the strobe utility.

Used a laptop with an Nvidia GTX 560M and the whole process worked fine using the open source drivers. One thing to note is on my monitor the flash chip was detected as the MX25L1605A, so I didn't need to change this. Also to exit the burn in mode on mine it was the menu + exit buttons (the 2 buttons directly above the power button)

[serg]

Hello everyone I wanted to thank you for all, I have successfully flashed my XL2420Z with these instructions to here.

However, were my first try not so successful. Yesterday I spent 5 hours to fix this.

First try:
with laptop built-in Intel graphics card:

1. result = writing error

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"errno6: spi nbyte program fialed falling on command execution at address-0x2900" 

multiple repetition has not helped, others VGA cable did not help here.
 
My monitor was a brick. No picture no response simply nothing.

The only thing I've seen was on i2c bus address 0x49 0x50 0x59

Next try:

I have my old CRT screen taken out of the cellar and have since been joined in my gaming computer.
My gaming computer has SLi with 2x GTX 760 for happiness.

CRT screen with "DVI to D-Sub" adapter to vga card #1

XL2420Z screen with "DVI to D-Sub" adapter to vga card #2

and i used the open source driver "nouveau"

And it worked and it went twice faster!

is this possible with the firmware V2, the colors have also become better? maybe that's imagination, I do not know.

[mdzapeer]

Yes!, firmware upgraded using linux for XL2720Z, and GTX 670 with VGA cable (DVI to VGA adapter used). A few snags because of lack of linux knowledge and the commands being used but nothing major. My computer showed the VGA i2c bus on 0 instead like in the instructions, so something to keep an eye out for.

Main thing to look for:

1) Make sure you have i2c enabled bus, under the command "sudo i2cdetect -l"

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i2c-0	i2c       	i915 gmbus ssc                  	I2C adapter (this should not say unknown)

if it says unknown use a different machine.

2) Under the "sudo ./flashrom -p mstarddc_spi:dev=/dev/i2c-1:49" the 1 in 1:49 is the bus no. mine was zero so i used 0:49, change it to match your monitor was identified with "sudo i2cdump -r 0-127 1 0x50 " Again the 1 here is the bus no.

3) Again under the same command the i2c driver should identify the flash chip MX25L1605A/MX25L1606E

if all this is good then proceed to back up your firmware and then copy it your backup folder form the flashrom folder in linux, (these folder will be deleted if you havent installed linux)

Before writing the firmware make sure the firmware.bin file created with below commands is 2MB in size, again its in the flashrom folder

tr '\000' '\377' < /dev/zero | dd of=firmware.bin bs=1k count=2k
dd if=XL2411Z_V2_20131209_8B72.BIN of=firmware.bin conv=notrunc

The firmware file should match the firmware you downloaded of course

And dont forget to change the correct bus no. as well when sending the write command "sudo ./flashrom -p mstarddc_spi:dev=/dev/i2c-1:49 -c "MX25L1605A/MX25L1606E" -w firmware.bin"

Lastly be patient it takes a while to read and backup the firmware and longer still to read/write/verify the firmware.

Thanks pipomolo42 YOU ARE THE MAN, praise the sun and jolly cooperation! Thanks to everyone who posted in this thread as well it was great help.

A great learning experience as well. Thank chief as well.
---
Proud owner of V2 XL2720Z

[Chief Blur Buster]

Thank you again everyone!!

Successfully flashed my XL2420Z to V2 using the method in the blog and the screen does look amazing using the strobe utility.

Hello everyone I wanted to thank you for all, I have successfully flashed my XL2420Z with these instructions to here.

Yes!, firmware upgraded using linux for XL2720Z
...snip...
great learning experience as well. Thank chief as well.
Proud owner of V2 XL2720Z

You're welcome, everyone!

[pipomolo42]

It really great to have all these reports!

In the end, it works with all thee major graphics vendors : ATI, Nvidia and Intel.

It would also seem that laptop chipsets vary a lot, and it is safer to to the upgrade on a desktop PC, using a second display.

[RealNC]

You can also use a laptop to SSH into the machine where you do the upgrade. You can also use your smartphone by installing an SSH client and get into the machine that way.

So pretty much everyone can do it, even without a second monitor.

If you've never used SSH before, it's fairly easy. Just install the SSH server on the machine and get the local IP with "sudo ifconfig":

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eth0: flags=4163<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,MULTICAST>  mtu 1500
        inet 10.0.0.1  netmask 255.255.255.0  broadcast 10.0.0.255
        ...

In the above, the local IP is 10.0.0.1. Then, use an SSH client from another machine ("ssh" command in Linux, the PuTTY client on Windows, or something like JuiceSSH on Android) and connect to 10.0.0.1. You'll get a shell where you can then become root ("su -") and do the flashing.

[Apocalypse]

This does seem more interesting to purchase a 2411z or a 2420z now. Unfortunately, I don't really understand a lot of this terminology haha.

There will be a special Blur Busters article to cover all the special terminology (persistence, strobe crosstalk, vertical totals).

What matters is the motion clarity you get with LightBoost (the predecessor to newer optimized blur reduction technologies such as BENQ Blur Reduction, ULMB and Turbo240), which you can see in PHOTOS: 60Hz versus 120Hz versus LightBoost as well as LightBoost testimonials. This kind of stuff is why people buy strobe backlights nowadays in the best gaming monitors found in the Official 120Hz Monitor List.

If you want to do Amazon, there are XL2411Z, XL2420Z and XL2720Z on Amazon. Currently, as of May 2014, reports have been coming in that monitors shipped from USA and Canada are now consistently Version 2 monitors, so you are not very likely to need to upgrade them. And if you do, there's now several methods you can do to upgrade, including this free Linux method, which is great!

Unfortunately I'm in the UK, would you happen to know anything about the availability over here? I'm thinking of getting the 2411Z version because I'm only going to be using the DL-DVI port and possibly the HDMI port for my Xbox 360 now and then, but I don't want to miss out on the design of the 2420Z and the S-Switch haha. I've had friends telling me to get the ASUS VG248QE, but to be honest the BenQ XL range just seems like the monitor I want to get.

[Tha ShuRRik]

Hello all.
My monitor XL2720 is brick
sorry my bad english (
I do not want to talk about long problems "wget -O- http://boeglin.org/static/benq/0001-Add ... ocol.patch | patch -p1" ((((
monitor is not turn on.
-----
now established:
2 * 560 gtx in SLi
SyncMaster 757nf DVi to D-Sub adapter in VGA card 1
BenQ Xl2720z DVI to D-sub adapter in VGA card 2
-----

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ubuntu@ubuntu:~/flashrom$ sudo i2cdetect -l
i2c-0 i2c nouveau-0000:01:00.0-0 I2C adapter
i2c-1 i2c nouveau-0000:01:00.0-1 I2C adapter
i2c-2 i2c nouveau-0000:01:00.0-2 I2C adapter
i2c-3 i2c nouveau-0000:01:00.0-5 I2C adapter
i2c-4 i2c nouveau-0000:01:00.0-6 I2C adapter
i2c-5 i2c nouveau-0000:01:00.0-7 I2C adapter
i2c-6 i2c nouveau-0000:01:00.0-8 I2C adapter
i2c-7 i2c nouveau-0000:01:00.0-9 I2C adapter
i2c-8 i2c nouveau-0000:01:00.0-10 I2C adapter
i2c-9 i2c nouveau-0000:01:00.0-11 I2C adapter
i2c-10 i2c nouveau-0000:01:00.0-12 I2C adapter
i2c-11 i2c nouveau-0000:01:00.0-13 I2C adapter
i2c-12 i2c nouveau-0000:02:00.0-0 I2C adapter
i2c-13 i2c nouveau-0000:02:00.0-1 I2C adapter
i2c-14 i2c nouveau-0000:02:00.0-2 I2C adapter
i2c-15 i2c nouveau-0000:02:00.0-5 I2C adapter
i2c-16 i2c nouveau-0000:02:00.0-6 I2C adapter
i2c-17 i2c nouveau-0000:02:00.0-7 I2C adapter
i2c-18 i2c nouveau-0000:02:00.0-8 I2C adapter
i2c-19 i2c nouveau-0000:02:00.0-9 I2C adapter
i2c-20 i2c nouveau-0000:02:00.0-10 I2C adapter
i2c-21 i2c nouveau-0000:02:00.0-11 I2C adapter
i2c-22 i2c nouveau-0000:02:00.0-12 I2C adapter
i2c-23 i2c nouveau-0000:02:00.0-13 I2C adapter

SyncMaster on bus0:

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ubuntu@ubuntu:~/flashrom$ sudo i2cdetect 0
I will probe file /dev/i2c-0.
I will probe address range 0x03-0x77.
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 a b c d e f
00: -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
10: -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
20: -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
30: -- -- -- -- -- -- -- 37 -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
40: -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
50: 50 -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
60: -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
70: -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- 

BenQ on bus12

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ubuntu@ubuntu:~/flashrom$ sudo i2cdump -r 0-127 12 0x50
No size specified (using byte-data access)
I will probe file /dev/i2c-12, address 0x50, mode byte
Probe range limited to 0x00-0x7f.

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 a b c d e f 0123456789abcdef
00: XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
10: XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
20: XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
30: XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
40: XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
50: XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
60: XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
70: XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

WTF ?
-------------
# write firmware
sudo ./flashrom -p mstarddc_spi:dev=/dev/i2c-1:49 -c "MX25L1605A/MX25L1606E" -w firmware.bin

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Calibrating delay loop... OK.
Info: Will try to use device /dev/i2c-12 and address 0x49.
Info: WILL reset the device at the end.
Error enabling ISP mode: errno 6 & 6.
Please check that device (/dev/i2c-12) and address (0x49) are correct.
Error: Programmer initialization failed.

What to do?