Viktor describes on his website how he used the Bus Pirate to recover a laptop after a failed BIOS update:
Once I had to open the laptop to fix it I decided to take this opportunity to explore the options there are for fixing the broken BIOS and compile my findings in this article. In the process I tried all of the methods described below, some on the actual laptop I fixed eventually, some on (really-really) dead motherboards.
There are several ways of getting the right BIOS back in the computer – in the following I am going to present a number of ways to get your laptop back on its feet. There are probably more ways to do it, but this should be a good starting point for someone in the same shoes as I was.
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You have to look at the old chip very carefully (datasheet) and read it before you replace the chip. There are many PCs and BIOS EEPROMs that have an OTP section containing information about the system (serial # and other info). That data needs to be copied too if the chip is replaced. Otherwise you may still have problems if the BIOS code checks for those settings.