I need help recovering the BIOS on my RS815+

[Jack_Black]

Hi everyone,

I’m trying to reprogram the BIOS chip on my Synology RS815+. Unfortunately, Google hasn’t been able to help, and I’m struggling to find or compile a suitable BIOS file. If anyone has a suitable BIOS file for the RS815+ and could upload or send it to me, that would be fantastic.

 

Thanks in advance for any help and replies!

 

Best regards

[Jolly Good]

The bios.ROM and related files needed for flashing (HSOFFT-Lx64, isfl_drv_x64.ko, updater and platform.ini) are all part of the latest DSM 7.1.1 (42962) .pat archive for the RS815+, so they can all be picked up at the Synology Download Center:

https://global.synologydownload.com/download/DSM/release/7.1.1/42962-1/DSM_RS815%2B_42962.pat

 

Extract that .pat archive with https://github.com/K4L0dev/Synology_Archive_Extractor. The bios.ROM is located in the root of the archive.

 

From here, you should be able to re-flash your bios with "updater -b", provided that your can gain shell access through a serial connection.

 

 

 

Edited November 2 by Jolly Good

[Jack_Black]

Hi, thanks for your help. I’ve already tried, but I don’t quite understand which part of the bios.rom I need to load onto the 25q064a chip. I’ve experimented a lot, but I haven’t been able to get anything to work. Unfortunately, the RS815+ doesn’t have a COM port, or at least I couldn’t find one. I’m using a TTL866 to program the BIOS Flash. If someone could tell me which part of the bios.rom to use, I could do it myself, or maybe share the original BIOS for the RS815+ with me.

Edited November 2 by Jack_Black

[Jolly Good]

Ok, I am not familiar with the RS815+ board, so I cannot tell; my experience comes from DS415+, which has a 6-pin serial connector (JP2) located close to the CMOS-battery. On the RS815+ it looks like there is a 6-pin block, however, the pins are missing.

 

Anyway, you have a programmer, so if you can still read your old bios chip, you can try the following:

- Create a new, blank hex file

- Fill it with 0xFFh from 0x0 to 0x7FFFFFh

- Read out 0x0h to 0xFFFh from your old BIOS and paste it to address 0x0h in the new hex file

- Copy all content of the bios.ROM from the .pat file and paste it to address 0x200000h in the new hex file

- Save that to e.g. newbios.ROM (file length should be 8.388.608 bytes)

 

Burn and pray.

[Jack_Black]

Jolly Good

Thank you very much for your assistance! I successfully managed to get my RS815+ to boot. However, I’m now encountering a different issue: the network card is not functioning, the LEDs that should be lit are not illuminated, and the RS815+ is not visible on the network.

I suspect that the files on the USB-DOM may be corrupted. I created an adapter and replaced the checksum.syno, grub_cksum.syno, rd.gz, and zImage files with versions from the 7.0.1 firmware. I also replaced the bios.rom file with the same version 7.0.1-42218, but unfortunately, the RS815+ still doesn’t appear on the network.

Thank you again for your help.

[Jolly Good]

Good to hear, however, it sounds like your bios is not really healthy.

 

Did you copy those 0xFFF bytes over from your old bios as well before flashing? Without those bytes, you will most likely face network issues and the rack station will neither show up in Synology Assistant.

 

If it is booting properly now, really go for gaining access through the serial port, so you can see from the boot log, what is going on. If your RS815+ board looks like the attached picture, you have a dedicated 9-pin DSUB console port on the back (following the ribbon cable), which facilitates serial communication.

 

Inspecting the boot log, your RS815+ bios on DSM 7.0.1-42218 should read "Insyde MohonPeak BIOS M.211". If it reads something else, it has been flashed with a wrong bios.

 

Having gained serial access, I'd recommend to do a proper reflash of the bios, using the normal Synology "updater" routines as described in #1 above.

 

 

Edited November 4 by Jolly Good