Firmware upgrade using Linux tool, requires no hardware

[Falkentyne]

Glad that's working.
As far as the DVI port, most likely that can be fixed by using the Mstar ISP flasher itself and the Mstar unit. The mstar unit is the official way Benq themselves upgrade the firmware in house. There's also an eeprom or EDID thing for it although I have no idea about that

[SlvrDragon50]

I've got a question.

I just bought a BenQ Xl2720Z w/ V3 firmware from someone, and it seems that V4 is quite a significant upgrade.

I want to do the firmware upgrade, but my laptop only has VGA over a USB cable, is this going to affect my ability to upgrade the firmware?

I can use the VGA port on my desktop, but it seems like a laptop is better?

[Falkentyne]

If your motherboard has a traditional BIOS (not UEFI) then you can try it over the desktop over DVI. It worked fine over two flashes on my P67 motherboard with Award Bios and a Radeon 290x DVI port, no problems at all. It may require the monitor driver installed through windows, even though you are flashing through Linux...apparently Linux can somehow see windows drivers.

I don't know anything about UEFI Bioses, however. You can try it.
I know absolutely nothing about "VGA over USB." Not going to even touch that with a 10 foot pole. that's on you.

V4 on a XL2720Z is a massive change. Not only does it fix the custom strobe settings not applying at 100hz+ refresh rate if single strobe is turned OFF (undocumented bugfix: single strobe is "always" on if the refresh rate is 100hz or higher, on previous firmware, if blur reduction were turned on (from off) if single strobe were "off" at 100hz+, custom settings were ignored until brightness or any strobe settings were changed), a new AMA high mode was secretly added for blur reduction that I can safely call "AMA low"; seems to use lightboost level AMA instead of the overly aggressive AMA high if you set AMA to high after (not before) enabling blur reduction.

This AMA "low" setting works best with contrast lower than 20 (looks best at 0-10, or you get too much normal ghosting) and ANY change to refresh rate, brightness, strobe duty, strobe phase or Single Strobe will revert the AMA back to the default "high", so remember that.

[SlvrDragon50]

So I'm guessing the VGA flash works because it's analog? And the USB results in some sort of conversion of data and probably data loss.

Can't ASUS motherboards switch between UEFI and traditional bios? I've got an ASUS P8Z68-V LX.

[SlvrDragon50]

Hi Falkentyne,

I just got my monitor, and I want to upgrade the firmware this weekend since I have some free time.

Where do I get the XL2720Z V4 firmware? I can only find the 2411Z firmware.

[Falkentyne]

Should be in this thread.
http://forums.blurbusters.com/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=1969

[SlvrDragon50]

Awesome, thanks. Will try to do the upgrade later today.

[SlvrDragon50]

Hi Falkentyne,

I'm having trouble where when I run the "sudo i2cdetect 1", nothing is popping up. I only see -- across the entire array.

Never mind, found it on hub 5. I am unsure which one is the monitor though. I see 0x50: 50, 7x30:37, 9x40:49 9x50:59, ax30:3a bx30:3b?

Never mind again. Followed the next step and found 0x50:50 was the BenQ monitor. I got an error trying to identify the flash chip.

"Error sending read command: errno 6. No EEPROM/flash device found. NOte: flashrom can never write if the flash chip isn't found automatically."

[Falkentyne]

You said you found the benq monitor on bus 5 right?

In that case you should be sending the command to identify it on bus 5

"sudo ./flashrom -p mstarddc_spi:dev=/dev/i2c-N:49"
Where "N" is the bus

so:
"sudo ./flashrom -p mstarddc_spi:dev=/dev/i2c-5:49" in your case.

then to dump:

sudo ./flashrom -p mstarddc_spi:dev=/dev/i2c-5:49 -c "MX25L1605A/MX25L1606E" -r backup.bin

Then do the merging commands as listed below to create the dummy file, merge the downloaded firmware with the dummy file (this is required to extend the firmware u downloaded to 2 MB) then when ur all done:

sudo ./flashrom -p mstarddc_spi:dev=/dev/i2c-5:49 -c "MX25L1605A/MX25L1606E" -w firmware.bin

Remember you MUST merge the bin file u downloaded with the "Dummy" file that was called firmware.bin which then creates a merged firmware.bin. So do not forget those steps!

[SlvrDragon50]

Oh, why is it 49? I thought it is 5:50?

I think I bricked my BenQ, and I can't get it back on Well, it works when I load up Ubuntu, but it won't work when I load up Windows.