faked bluepill? Bluepill Diagnostics V1.640

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gregor.fey@gmx.de
Posts: 3
Joined: Mon May 15, 2023 7:09 am

faked bluepill? Bluepill Diagnostics V1.640

Post by gregor.fey@gmx.de »

Hi,

i bought my bluepills in late 2017 / early 2018 and left them in the box since then. After getting back to the pills, i read about fakes comming up arround the time i bought mine. Therefore i'm not sure if these boards contain chips manufactured by STM or fake ones.

To test the boards i installed stm32f103c8 diagnostics v 1.640 on one of them. The test for 128kb of flash is passed successfully, but the results shown below are printed when running the stm32f193c8 authenticity test.

Code: Select all

STM32F103C8 authentication FAILED one or more tests:
----------------------------------------------------
FAIL - Declared flash not 65536
PASS - DBGMCU_IDCODE is NOT readable without SWD/Jtag connected
PASS - Second 64KB flash block verified
PASS - JDEC manufacturer id IS STMicroelectronics
Since there are post on the internet stating that bluepills with 128kb of flash exist, the question is if the board tested contains an original chip.

Any thoughts concerning the question are wellcome.

Best regards
Gregor
techman001
Posts: 2
Joined: Sun Aug 20, 2023 2:10 am

Re: faked bluepill? Bluepill Diagnostics V1.640

Post by techman001 »

Apologies for the late reply, I'm the Bluepill Diags V1.640 designer.

It looks to me as tho your chip may be a STM32F103C8 badged genuine STM32F103RB which does advertise 128KB flash, hence the "FAIL - Declared flash not 65536".


Cheers,
Terry
tankkar
Posts: 1
Joined: Wed Sep 13, 2023 11:05 am

Re: faked bluepill? Bluepill Diagnostics V1.640

Post by tankkar »

It looks to me as tho your chip may be a STM32F103C8 badged genuine STM32F103RB which does advertise 128KB flash, hence the "FAIL - Declared flash not 65536".

i am in same boat, what does this mean? its a false positive? or is it a fake?
sorry the way that you wrote it was a little confusing, i bought two bluepills same company and one passes and other fails

1st one

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STM32F103C8 authentication FAILED one or more tests:
----------------------------------------------------
FAIL - Declared flash not 65536
PASS - DBGMCU_IDCODE is NOT readable without SWD/Jtag connected
PASS - Second 64KB flash block verified
PASS - JDEC manufacturer id IS STMicroelectronics

2nd one

Code: Select all

STM32F103C8 authentication PASSED all these tests:
----------------------------------------------------
PASS - Declared flash = 65536 Bytes
PASS - DBGMCU_IDCODE is NOT readable without SWD/Jtag connected
PASS - Second 64KB flash block verified
PASS - JDEC manufacturer id IS STMicroelectronics
ag123
Posts: 1655
Joined: Thu Dec 19, 2019 5:30 am
Answers: 24

Re: faked bluepill? Bluepill Diagnostics V1.640

Post by ag123 »

from AliX, ebay, amazon etc and the various 'online flea markets', there is more than a fair chance getting a board that isn't 'original ST'.
these days there are 'clone' chips, i.e. 3rd party microcontrollers that tries to be 'compatible' with stm32.

but that for 'fake' boards, there are a lot of different varieties, it used to be some of the 'fake' boards actually have a real STM chip, but maybe they solder a stm32f103f6 rather than a stm32f103f8 and some soldered stm32f0 on the same board.
then there are clones.

for a start, I'd prefer to simply go on to the stm32f40x f411 families (better and faster, more sram and flash mostly) cost a bit more.
and look around for the more reputable vendors

e.g. Weact made some rather decent boards
https://github.com/WeActStudio/WeActStu ... iSTM32F4x1

then for some premium Adafruit makes a f405 'feather' board which is small and compact, packs enough sram and flash to run circuit python, micropython
https://www.adafruit.com/product/4382

olimex has some boards as well
https://www.olimex.com/Products/ARM/ST/STM32-H405/
https://www.olimex.com/Products/ARM/ST/

and there are Nucleos which are original ST ordered from the reputable distributors digikey, mouser, farnell etc
techman001
Posts: 2
Joined: Sun Aug 20, 2023 2:10 am

Re: faked bluepill? Bluepill Diagnostics V1.640

Post by techman001 »

tankkar wrote: Wed Sep 13, 2023 11:10 am
It looks to me as tho your chip may be a STM32F103C8 badged genuine STM32F103RB which does advertise 128KB flash, hence the "FAIL - Declared flash not 65536".

i am in same boat, what does this mean? its a false positive? or is it a fake?

> I think it's a genuine STM32F103RB. My test looks for a genuine STM32F103C8 and fails if it doesn't find one. It doesn't test for genuine STM32Fxxxx mcu's. The STM32F103RB has 128KB of Flash and also declares it has it.

sorry the way that you wrote it was a little confusing, i bought two bluepills same company and one passes and other fails

1st one

Code: Select all

STM32F103C8 authentication FAILED one or more tests:
----------------------------------------------------
FAIL - Declared flash not 65536
PASS - DBGMCU_IDCODE is NOT readable without SWD/Jtag connected
PASS - Second 64KB flash block verified
PASS - JDEC manufacturer id IS STMicroelectronics
> I think this is a genuine STM32F103RB also


2nd one

Code: Select all

STM32F103C8 authentication PASSED all these tests:
----------------------------------------------------
PASS - Declared flash = 65536 Bytes
PASS - DBGMCU_IDCODE is NOT readable without SWD/Jtag connected
PASS - Second 64KB flash block verified
PASS - JDEC manufacturer id IS STMicroelectronics
> And this is a genuine STM32F103C8
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