After a few idiot thoughts/wrong realizations, I finally figured out the problem with the chips I tried before for iQue.
I bought 5, only 3 work. Reasons could be poor storage, they were broken, they were from aliexpress, they were fake, etc.
I only tried one of the bad ones and gave up. So M45PE40s do work, just gotta get them from somewhere reliable (not fun when they're out of production...)