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Last active October 17, 2025 16:36
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AQC113 Firmware Flashing and Recovery Notes

Just gonna leave my notes that I saved here quickly if others want to pursue this: (Warning: if someone comes across this in the future, if you don't know what you're doing you can brick your NIC, proceed at your own risk):

Flash files can be found on station-drivers.com Marvell/Aquantia AQC & AQN Ethernet Drivers & Firmwares

Useful thread for information Marvell AQC113C FourPartID Firmware Updater Discussion

AQC113 Flashing

flashUpdate2.exe is the flashing tool used on Windows, it can be extracted from the flashUpdateAppPackage.Appx archive in the zip file.

You will need to disable windows memory protection and allow unsigned drivers by holding shift while clicking reboot then select allow unsigned drivers in advanced startup options. Alternatively Hiren’s BootCD PE can be used.

Before flashing it's a good idea to check updatedata.xml for the matching image of your VID, PID, SVID, SDID which can be found with

lspci -vnn -s 03:00.0

where 03:00.0 should be replaced by your Ethernet device pci address which shows in lspci

03:00.0 Ethernet controller [0200]: Aquantia Corp. AQtion AQC113 NBase-T/IEEE 802.3an Ethernet Controller [Antigua 10G] [1d6a:04c0] (rev 03)
Subsystem: Aquantia Corp. AQtion AQC113 NBase-T/IEEE 802.3an Ethernet Controller [Antigua 10G] [1d6a:0001]

I found the matching entry corresponding to the correct firmware file in updatedata.xml which matches all the above VID, PID, SVID, SDID

  <bdp id="8">
    <hwids>
      <pciid vid="1d6a" did="04c0" sdid="0001" svid="1d6a" />
    </hwids>
    <mac>01000c0040000000000000000100000002000c00000300003ddb9ca1ffffffff</mac>
    <phy>0301040200e4030003001cc482b1ffff1dc482b1ffff1ec40100ffff</phy>
    <exprom>True</exprom>
    <image>AQC113-Antigua_Bx-1.3.33_bdp_aqsign.clx</image>
  </bdp>

Normal update procedure: Specify AGENT image + Firmware required

D:\flashUpdateAppPackage>flashUpdate2.exe --update ATL2-8.0.1_agent_SIGN.clx AQC113-Antigua_Bx-1.3.33_bdp_aqsign.clx

Forced Reflash: The command I used to recover the bricked AQC113 nic or can be used if the above doesn't work

D:\flashUpdateAppPackage>flashUpdate2.exe --reflash ATL2-8.0.1_agent_SIGN.clx AQC113-Antigua_Bx-1.3.33_bdp_aqsign.clx

This one resulted in functional card updated to 1.3.33

flashUpdate2.exe flags

Usage: flashUpdate2 [-d DEVICE] [-t TYPE] [-v] [--erase|--recover|--reflash|--update]
                    AGENT.clx [IMAGE.clx]
Options:

    -h, --help Display help message.

    -d DEVICE  Device name from listDevices tool.
               You can use shortcuts to access the first device
               in a family: PCI, DIAG.
    -t TYPE    Device type. By default program tries to detect device
               type by analyzing DEVICE name.
               You can specify one of the following: PCI, DIAG.
    -i         Display four part ids .
    -u         Ignore if the clx fw version is same as the current fw version.
    -v         Verbose output.
    --erase    Erase the flash.
    --recover  Recover flash content. IMAGE.clx must be specified.
    --reflash  Replace flash image with the new one. IMAGE.clx must be specified.
    --update   Perform update. IMAGE.clx must be specified.
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