I needed to reflash a Sony VAIO BIOS flash with an external programmer. I have had no contents for that so I have had to extract it from the vendor BIOS upgrade.

Unfortunatelly my update did not put the ROM file to the %temp% folder as it is suggested here:
http://www.legroom.net/node/1020

I have fired up the ProcessMonitor and it helped me to figure out where is it:


So always look for the ROM file in the C:\ProgramData\Sony Corporation\Sony Packaging Manager\PackagingTemp while the updater is running.

Just a side note to this blogpost:
http://users.atw.hu/balubati/blog/index ... 529-094303

The method only works if the INF file has a DefaultInstall key.

Something like this:

===========================================================================
; Default Installer
;===========================================================================

[DefaultInstall]
CopyINF=driver.inf


Also I have learned how to get rid from a device driver totally:
List installed drivers with pnputil -e.
Find the appropiate one (oem[n].inf)
Uninstall the devices from device manager using this driver
Run pnputil -d oem[n].inf to delete the driver

I have been lucky to "legally" take apart some Cisco conference phones to PERMANENTLY remove the unused and unknown DECT functionality because if the locale is set to wrong country in the device it might cause some interfence with the UMTS frequencies which is illegal in my country and not tolerated well by the goverment agencies...

The DECT module is manufactured by the Dialog semi can be seen on the left. (SC14441) The main SoC, flash, RAM should live under the shield, but I have not delved more deeper because we wanted to keep the warranty (there are no stamped screws to provide evidence to the device tampering).

There are a plenty of unpopulated debug headers on the board (I think mostly JTAG).

The board has only oneintresting text on the silkscreen:
Beignet Base 1000706-00 revK

We have used a salvaged PK40000K300 camera in our robot for the 10th Applied sciences competition:



Pinout for reference:
GND: Orange
+3.3V: Black! Don't ask why.
D-: Brown
D+ Orange

It has pretty good quality compared to another notebook cams what I have seen before.

I have salvaged a builtin camera from an IBM Thinkpad T420 notebook.
After some DMM peek-poke I have managed to figure out the USB pinout:



VUSB: Yellow
GND: White
D-: Green
D+: Orange

The rest of the wires are for the MICs I think.