I once bricked a motherboard with a bad flash, probably around 2012. I ended up desoldering the SPI flash and reprogramming it from another computer. Worked. In hindsight, it was quicker to do that than to go through the "front door" with the manufacturer-provided utilities.
Reminds me when I did something similar back around 2008. The motherboard was made by ECS and came with a "Top-Hat" -- essentially a second flash memory chip that you can snap on top of the board. No desoldering required! More details here: https://www.pcstats.com/articles/1835/3.html
Some motherboard makers (Gigabyte, I think?) would include a socket for the BIOS EEPROM chip, even in relatively mid-range motherboards. I thought that was really cool, but a bit strange. It makes sense on high-end overclocking motherboards where some customers might actually use it and where there's not much of a cost constraint. But it seemed a bit extravagant to spend ~$0.30 on something that almost nobody would ever use. Maybe their service department used it to fix some RMA'd motherboards more quickly.
It looks to have gone out of fashion, I can't find any modern motherboards that have it but I didn't look that hard. Probably because BIOS flashback has gotten more common and because the tall socket would interfere with all the SSD heatsinks they have now.
What was extra-cavalier about it was that I didn't even bother disassembling the computer to get the motherboard out of the case. Did it in-situ at awkward angles with the tower in my lap. I did take out the graphics card to give myself some space to work though.
