[flashrom] ANNOUNCE: flashrom 0.9.6 is out

[Carl-Daniel Hailfinger]

The flashrom developers are happy to announce the release of the
flashrom 0.9.6 series.

flashrom is a utility for reading, writing, erasing and verifying flash
ROM chips.

flashrom is designed to flash BIOS/[U]EFI/coreboot/firmware/optionROM
images on mainboards, network/graphics/storage controller cards, and
various programmer devices. It can do so without any special boot
procedures and from your normal working environment.


Highlights of flashrom
======================
  * Parallel, LPC, FWH and SPI flash interfaces.
  * Support for onboard programming and external programmers.
  * 300 (+12 since 0.9.5) flash chip types/models some with a number of
    variants each.
  * 220 (+44 since 0.9.5) different chipsets, some with multiple flash
    controllers.
  * 401 (+27 since 0.9.5) mainboards verified to be working.
  * Flash chip package agnostic. DIP32, PLCC32, DIP8, SO8/SOIC8,
    TSOP32/40/48, BGA and more have all been verified to work.
  * 50 PCI devices, various USB and parallel port devices, and all
    external programmers compatible with serprog or SI Prog can be used
    for flashing.
  * No physical access needed. root access is sufficient.
  * No bootable floppy disk, bootable CD-ROM or other media needed.
  * No keyboard or monitor needed. Simply reflash remotely via SSH.
  * No instant reboot needed. Reflash your ROM in a running system,
    verify it, be happy. The new firmware will be present next time you
    boot.
  * Crossflashing and hotflashing is possible as long as the flash chips
    are electrically and logically compatible (same protocol). Great for
    recovery.
  * Scriptability. Reflash a whole pool of identical machines at the
    same time from the command line. It is recommended to check flashrom
    output and error codes.
  * Speed. flashrom is much faster than vendor flash tools.
  * Supports Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD, DragonFly BSD, OpenBSD, Nexenta,
    Solaris, Mac OS X and DOS fully, Windows partially (no flashing of
    mainboards). Please refer to the README for build instructions.

A list of new features can be found at http://flashrom.org/Flashrom/0.9.6

Please note that rewriting your flash chip can be dangerous and flashrom
developers make no guarantees whatsoever. That said, many users have
successfully replaced proprietary tools such as awdflash, amiflash and
afudos with flashrom.


Download
========
flashrom 0.9.6.1 can be downloaded in various ways:

Anonymous checkout from the subversion repository at
svn://flashrom.org/flashrom/tags/flashrom-0.9.6.1

A tarball is available for download at
http://download.flashrom.org/releases/flashrom-0.9.6.1.tar.bz2

flashrom homepage with more info: http://flashrom.org/


Thanks
======
We wish to thank everyone who contributed to flashrom over the last
eleven years. Patches, bug reports, tests, user support, community
outreach, datasheet hunting, reverse engineering and other activities
have made flashrom the universal and reliable tool it is today.