Detecting Fake BluePills - BEWARE

[rubber_jonnie]

Hi Jonathan,

I got THREE of those Blue Pill boards. Two of them identify as 0x410 chips (as you have one of them) and my other one here identifies with a code of 0x414 and passes the blinky test.

Chip markings on the blue pill
PICT0001.jpg

Device detection in the stm32CubeProgrammer - 256kb memory
Screenshot from 2023-08-07 17-05-23.png

Passes blinky test as have got a flashing LED on PC13 however, it flashed without having the BOOT0 jumper set to programming mode.

Thanks for testing it though for me, I have got a known working ACSI2STM device by a guy called Masteries over on the atari-forum. It came from Spain today and I plugged it in and it worked strait away. no messing about. So, at least I know there isn't a problem with the ACSI side on my STE. It can turn into a rather expensive game of operation if not careful with these vintage machines. The blue pill on the Masteries version is marked as a C6T6A.

I know there are others that have built the device based on the github (https://github.com/retro16/acsi2stm) and they have worked straight away without fault so it would appear that I have been extremely unlucky with my blue pill boards. I Have just noticed however that this one may also be a fake as they have printed on the silk screen next to the reset button 'RESRT' instead of reset

Thanks again,

Brett

Going by the 'visual inspection' from Keir Frasers site, that one 'looks' genuine, but I think it's really difficult to tell. Mine both look like that but as @czietz mentions, mine could still be dodgy as the memory doesn't match.

[rubber_jonnie]

I'm glad this has started a discussion, which is what I hoped would happen.

I think it's great everybody has some ponit of view, hopefully we can get genuine sources from this.

[czietz]

Do you have a link to the data you posted, it would be really useful to have, thanks.

That screenshot was just from the ST website: https://www.st.com/en/microcontrollers- ... 2f103.html

[elterwater]

Out of curiosity, is there a known trusted source of genuine blue pill boards here in the UK? I've fallen down the rabbit hole of Farnell and Mouser and can't find anything resembling the boards, just the chips themselves. Any pointers would be gratefully received please

This is a UK based company. I've used them before, but not sure if I actually bought this device from them, i definitely bought the programmer from them:

https://hobbycomponents.com/st-micro-el ... ment-board

They even answer questions on their forum to assist.

Thanks, I'll give them a try and will see how it works out

[rubber_jonnie]

Do you have a link to the data you posted, it would be really useful to have, thanks.

That screenshot was just from the ST website: https://www.st.com/en/microcontrollers- ... 2f103.html

Thank you, that's really helpful.

It suggests mine could indeed be fake, or possibly a faulty R, V or Z type that's been re-labeled because it failed some tests. Either way they don't look quite right either. Seems like it's difficult to find the real thing, though mine do seem to run blinky and the BlueSCSI software seems to work too, and in fact they work in my A5000, but not my Mac Classic. Quite annoying.

[PhilC]

Well that’s just plain annoying, all of my Blue Pills so far have failed the blink test.

Fortunately I have a few of these spare, so I guess I’ll be doing some chip replacements this weekend if I get time.

image.jpg (145.05 KiB) Viewed 1243 times

These are all original chips, so I’ll run the blink test on these just to see once it’s changed over.

[rubber_jonnie]

Well that’s just plain annoying, all of my Blue Pills so far have failed the blink test.

Fortunately I have a few of these spare, so I guess I’ll be doing some chip replacements this weekend if I get time.

image.jpg

These are all original chips, so I’ll run the blink test on these just to see once it’s changed over.

Be good to see what results you get, but I do wonder if there are PCB differences too.

[PhilC]

@rubber_jonnie thats what I was wondering too but we will try and see what happens

[BrettRogersUK]

@rubber_jonnie thats what I was wondering too but we will try and see what happens

I was wondering if I could do this with mine. Just get some REAL STM32 ICs from somewhere like RS components and swap them onto the PCB. As @rubber_jonnie said, it just depends on if there are any changes in the PCB design or not.

Be interesting to see the results.

On another note, I have seen this site offered up to verify blue pill devices as being genuine or fake:
https://mecrisp-stellaris-folkdoc.sourc ... 1.640.html

This was referenced on another issue on the ACSI2STM github issues page.

[rubber_jonnie]

@rubber_jonnie thats what I was wondering too but we will try and see what happens

I'll be really interested in how you get on.