Blur Busters Forums

0x50 is the EDID dump.
0x49 is the communication channel (i2c).

What exactly happened?
Did you forget the merge commands?

The monitor isn't bricked.
What's going on?

The most common problem are people FORGETTING to merge the firmware you downloaded (<820 KB) with the dummy file you created (2 mb). Flashing a 0-byted (FF) 2 MB empty file isn't good.
One person actually did not even EXTRACT the bin file from the RAR/zip archive and tried to merge that :/ (extract it first).

At WORST possible case, it will be stuck in standby mode, and the i2c bus will be addressable and can be reflashed (you will need to AC power it off for 5 minutes and unplug it and plug it back in).

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Did you follow these instructions?

Copy the EXTRACTED Version 4 firmware into the flashrom folder. If you renamed it in windows (I suggest this), copy the renamed file. I suggest renaming XL2411Z's V4 (if you downloaded whitestar's backup.bin dump) to XL2411Z_V4.BIN, XL2420Z to XL2420Z_V4.BIN and the XL2720Z file to XL2720Z_V4.BIN

DO NOT RENAME IT TO FIRMWARE.BIN !!!!!

# extend firmware to 2MB, to match the flash chip size
(this step is important; the flash chip is 2 MB, but the raw firmware is 800k'ish. In order to flash with this flashrom patcher (the MSTAR ISP unit does not have this limitation), the other 1.2 MB must be filled with "empty/dummy" bytes to make the file 2 MB in total size. This is a limitation of flashrom itself).

tr '\000' '\377' < /dev/zero | dd of=firmware.bin bs=1k count=2k <--yes you need the ' ' there.
dd if=XL2411Z_V2_20131209_8B72.BIN of=firmware.bin conv=notrunc (# < important !--REPLACE XL2411Z_V2_20131209_8B72.BIN with your firmware you are flashing!! Example: XL2411Z_V4.BIN or XL2420Z_V4.BIN or XL2720Z_V4.bin (as I suggested above).

(What this did was, it created a DUMMY empty 2 MB file called firmware.bin.
Then it MERGED the V2 (for this example only, in your case it will be the V4 file) with the 2 MB dummy file, a new 2 MB V4 file, that will be called firmware.bin

Ahh, I see. I was doing the identify step on 5:50, not 5:49. Seems to progressing along fine right now. Currently dumping the file to backup.bin and will merge the file.

Thanks for the help Falkentyne. Will report back!

Remember it takes about 10-20 minutes to flash.
RS232 communication is SLOW.
It's basically running at modem speeds.
It was originally designed to be flashed with a parallel port / USB+VGA adapter (Mstar unit), but someone found a Mstar programmer that was used for other mstar devices (the Benq monitor isn't the only device that uses an mstar flash rom).

Well, got the BenQ to flash to V004.

Problem now is that the BenQ won't detect the video source (DVI). Not sure what the problem is now Something is wrong with the BenQ's DVI port since I can connect the XL2720Z to my computer via HDMI.

Might be a bad cable, but I don't know why it would suddenly stop working.

edit:

Something is wrong with my BenQ's DVI port. I swapped the cable out for another DVI cable (single) and it still doesn't work. Also causes my other monitor's screen to flicker every now and then.

I know when I was using the BenQ in Ubuntu, the screen was kinda messed up, and it wouldn't show the BenQ monitor in full resolution. I also tested the original DVI cable with another computer and monitor, and it worked no problem.

Can you get a DP cable?

There have been three people now who had the DVI port stop working after a flash, but the other two people were on an XL2420Z.
The DP cable will work correctly.
I don't know why this occurs with DVI. The Linux people who were active here haven't been here for awhile (Bishi, or the original programmer) I personally had no problem flashing through VGA on my laptop to V4, then with the DVI port through my R9 290X video card back to V2, then back to V4 (again through DVI).

May I ask what computer you used? It was a laptop right? Did it have a UEFI bios or a traditional legacy (e.g. Award, Phoenix) Bios?
Technically this problem should never occur. And no one knows yet why it happens. The only guess is something with EDID, however I don't even think the EDID is flashed. The service manual mentions a separate EDID flasher which seems optional, as the EDID files are not actually there.

One person who flashed back to V2 said the DVI port was still not working.
I suspect flashing with a real Mstar unit would get it working again but I know that DP is 100% functional.
This is the third failure of the DVI port I've seen so there must be something in common with why it failed.

Note there was someone who flashed a XL2411T monitor to an XL2411Z. His DVI port was not functional either--windows wouldn't detect it correctly, but he did something to get a correct EDID dump from an XL2411Z then used Linux to flash the EDID And then it worked, although blur reduction was not functional.

The only information I found was this thread:

http://forums.blurbusters.com/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=990

Did you have "DVI HPD" enabled in the service menu, by any chance (hotplug detect?)

You can try the following:
Enter the service menu.
Set strobe phase to 000.
Set DVI HPD to off
Internet café to off
Autopower to off

Unplug the monitor from the wall for 5 minutes.
Then reflash. If you copied the "firmware.bin" that you created and previously merged to the local hard drive, you won't have to do the merge commands again (I copied the full file as a backup so when I flashed to V2 and back to V4, I simply flashed without even needing to do some of other commands). (you can copy files in Linux back and forth to the windows drives).

Nope, I ended up using my desktop through my Radeon 7950 (DVI) since I saw you were able to flash with the R9 290X. I have a ASUS UEFI bios.

I've already placed an order for a Mini DP - DP cable (preferred choice anyways since it's much lighter than a DVI cable). I just hate that I have to go two days without 144 Hz

I was thinking something may have happened when I tried to probe the EDID, but I didn't think a probe would be able to mess it up like that. Not sure...

It's just a little mind boggling why it would work somewhat over DVI w/ Ubuntu but not Windows.

SlvrDragon50 wrote:Nope, I ended up using my desktop through my Radeon 7950 (DVI) since I saw you were able to flash with the R9 290X. I have a ASUS UEFI bios.

I've already placed an order for a Mini DP - DP cable (preferred choice anyways since it's much lighter than a DVI cable). I just hate that I have to go two days without 144 Hz

Seems like the common factor is the UEFI bios.
I know frankly NOTHING about UEFI.

All three of my successful flashes were done with a LEGACY bios (Phoenix bios on my MSI laptop with a GeForce 570m (used VGA port), Gigabyte P67 (Award) Bios on my desktop (Radeon 290x dvi port)

Do you have a computer with a traditional Bios, like an older system that can still boot to VGA? (either a classic Bios or an actual mstar unit). Because if the uefi bios is the problem, backflashing won't fix it on the ufi computer but im only taking a wild guess here.

Linux communicates directly with the hardware, btw, sort of like MS DOS, that's why the port works through Linux.

Unfortunately no. I definitely would have done it with a Legacy bios if I had one on hand, but I don't

I don't plan on selling the monitor so it really doesn't bother me that much. Plus, I feel most people are using DP over DVI-D anyways unless they want to overclock the monitor.

I didn't quite understand why the UEFI wouldn't work for the flash. At first I thought it simply meant that UEFI may not be able to detect the monitor when probing, but I guess UEFI can. It just doesn't do the flash 100%.

Hi Guys

Im trying now approx 10h, i want to make this stuff happen!!!

But i always get the error: unknown programmer of the Flashrom tool. I have loaded the patch for the flashrom, but it still doesnt work its so wierd:(

I can see my vga port and adresses but im just stuck at this mstaddc patch thing -.-

need help, gonna write my log soon.

Thanks

greetings

kwlski

You need to use the trunk@8xxx option, whatever it was (I forgot). the original instructions on page 1 link to an outdated flashrom build.