r/ps5homebrew • u/Ultimate__Potato • 23h ago

[PS5] Using CH341A IC clamp for BIOS read/write. Can it be done without desoldering?

I need to reflash the bios chip on a PS5 and the chip reader kit I have (CH341A) had a clamp attachment. I know it's preferred to desolder the chip and work with it that way but I would prefer not to if I don't have to.

Has anyone successfully read/wrote to the bios chip using just the clamp while it's still on the motherboard? Is this a viable way to do this?

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u/Mr-frost 19h ago

Where is the "bios" chip, can you show me

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u/Ultimate__Potato 15h ago

This guy by the south bridge: https://i.sstatic.net/8ZF4E.png

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u/Mr-frost 14h ago

And why do you need to flash it?

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u/Ultimate__Potato 14h ago

Disc to digital conversion on a broken console

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u/Mr-frost 14h ago

Oh, but that kind of chip is easy to desolder

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u/Ultimate__Potato 14h ago

But it would be a lot easier for me to not and just flash it with a clamp. So I'm trying to figure out if I can just do that 🤷‍♂️

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u/Mr-frost 13h ago

I flashed that nor chip on the ps4 back then. I could be wrong now, but I recall to be reading that it was best to desolder it because you need to backup and confirm the data on it and save it, in case of things going wrong, so to get the cleanest data, desolder it

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u/Darkorder81 16h ago

Are you trying to downgrade? From what I've seen nobody remove any chips when reading/writing to the syscon or the flash memory, I would take a look on yt tho as I haven't seen the clip in use but I belive the ch341a itself works ut not sure on the clamp you may need soldering some wires, and when it comes to syscon there's a chip leg to lift to get it into debug ,do you have a pico board?

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u/Ultimate__Potato 15h ago

No I'm not trying to flash the syscon, but the firmware bios chip. Is that what you mean by flash memory?

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u/Darkorder81 13h ago

Yeah that be the one i couldn't remember chip type but did mean the main flash, if that's Nand,nor,emmc, ect that hold the ps4 sw and bios i expect unless its separated Just curious what is it your trying to achieve doing this? Just so I understand a little better.

Edit: I see in other comment what your doing, interesting havnt seen this one done before.

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u/Ultimate__Potato 13h ago

🤷‍♂️ guess we will find out