Unbrick Synology DS918+

Some questions:

Are you sure you're flashing the chip correctly?

Did you remove the chip from the board to flash it? Which programmer are you using?

During boot, are you watching the output on the UART serial port?

Are you sure you're flashing the chip correctly?
Yes. First I've deleted the chip and verify it. Later I wrote the chip and verified with the software itself. Later I've read the chip and save in a file and compare the both files having clear that the bios is the same like I've writed.

the strange is after the first try to boot the NAS If I read the chip, the content always it's different than the wrote before.

Did you remove the chip from the board to flash it? Which programmer are you using?

At the beginning yes because using the CH431 programmer always have problems on verification, but later I've soldered and do it direclty in the mainboard with the software NeoProgrammer_2.2.0.8_from_4pda and AsProgrammer_2.0.3a, both works perfectly.

During boot, are you watching the output on the UART serial port?

During the boot I not see anything on the serial port. Only if I remove the memory ram in that case I see something like "Memory training fail, In a Dead Loop: Acting...". if I plug again the memory then not shows anything.

I've seen in the forum something about this, I need to check it but I'm open to some sugeriments...

I wonder if the system is trying to reflash the bios on boot…

Perhaps your winbond chip itself is bad? They can be found online..

Afternoon guys - just wanted to update you on my adventures as per the above. Had the exact same issue as above, only my DS918 would occasionally boot. Say one time in thirty ish, it would progress from flashing blue light to solid and beep, and then be absolutely fine for weeks at a time! However, the reboot or a power issue killed it again.

I used the CH341 as per above along with a SOIC clip, read the chip twice, extracted the bios.rom from the PAT files (only the ones before 7.1 will open in 7ZIP I think) and followed all of the above. However, no joy when trying to boot, same situation. However, after 3/4 retries, the Winbond chip seemed to go faulty and would have read/write errors.

Decided to roll the dice on a whole £5 worth of replacement Winbond chip, flashed it, then replaced it for my funky one. And just like superchromix, I was blown away that it now is absolutely fine again. Boots just fine every time so far, and it's been rebooted a lot!

So there you go, folks... If you are desparate, replace the Winbond. It's like 5 mins to flash, 2 mins of careful soldering and £5 to try, so give it a go!

Huge thanks to everybody above for their feedback and for basically getting me to this point. Awesome work guys.

Good day everyone,

I managed to flash the chip through your advice. However, I was too quick to flash the chip right away with the bios file from Synology. I didn't think about modifying the file with a hex editor.

Do any of you have the relevant information where to start and end the file?

Thank you very much in advance for your answers.

Sent you a PM

Thanks all, I was able to 'unbrick' my DS218+.

Hi, I just found this post on google. I'm had a DS218+ having same trouble, blinking non-stop after power failure.

Already back up faulty rom and extract a bios.bin from 7.0 pat file.

But having trouble modifying the bios, may I know your steps to fix the bios file?