ThinkPad I9990303 Error Catch-22

I have a GDP pocket laptop that I bricked, I had installed a special development bios with all options unlocked, then, hoping to disable USB3 I proceeded to disable all USB. And a cautionary note, never disable USB on a laptop where all devices are USB. laptop was now completely useless.

First thing I found out was the GDP pocket has no bios clear function(header or equivalent). I found one comment in a forum where somebody also had hard bios problems and was able to reflash it with an external programmer. Worth a try, So I bought a cheap programmer, level shifter, soic clip kit off amazon. and.... nothing was working, at this point not knowing if I was doing it wrong or if the process was even possible I sort of abandoned it. And the carcass sat on the healing bench for a year.

Prompted by the bag of parts on the bench and stumbling on another comment on how miserable shitty cheap soic clips are, I bought a good clip, carefully wired it up, and it flashed first try. plugged the battery back in and the infernal thing booted right up, it still had a charge.

So it is possible to reflash a pc firmware(bios) with an external programmer, probably best to remove the chip, but that is not always necessary. and if it is a soic package, get a good clip, I am happy to name drop Pomona electronics for making a quality product that actually worked and saved my little laptop. https://www.pomonaelectronics.com/products/test-clips/ic-tes...

I think the golden "catch 22" error will forever be the classic "No keyboard detected, press F1 to continue".