[flashrom] Unable to flash bios on a Tyan S2915-E

joelr at tyan.com joelr at tyan.com
Tue Dec 8 18:16:43 CET 2009


Carl-Daniel,

We tested this solution yesterday and we found no issues with the use of Flashrom and our S2915-E.  We have attached a screen shot of our results.

There is no different in S2915 or S2915-E.  Only hardware changes in regards to some VRM's to support the Quad and 6-core based AMD CPU's.  The rest of the hardware and the bios code is exactly the same for those two motherboards.

Joel Robertson
Tech Support Manager
Customer Service Manager
Vendor Relations Manager
joelr at tyan.com
(510) 651-8868 ext. 5196


-----Original Message-----
From: Carl-Daniel Hailfinger [mailto:c-d.hailfinger.devel.2006 at gmx.net] 
Sent: Thursday, December 03, 2009 8:41 AM
To: Alessandro Polverini
Cc: flashrom at flashrom.org; joelr (Joelr - TYANUS)
Subject: Re: [flashrom] Unable to flash bios on a Tyan S2915-E

Hi Joel,

IIRC you were the one who sent us a huge list of Tyan systems supported
by flashrom last year. That's why you're now the one whom we're asking
for a flashrom problem on the Tyan S2915.

The flash chip on a Tyan S2915 is not detected flashrom. Somehow the
flash chip does not respond to detection cycles. Are you aware of any
special hardware on that board which might sit between the southbridge
and the flash chip or any dual-chip tricks?

On 03.12.2009 14:18, Alessandro Polverini wrote:
> flashrom v0.9.1-r791
> No coreboot table found.
> Found chipset "NVIDIA MCP55", enabling flash write... OK.

The chipset is recognized, and LPC write passthrough is activated.

> This chipset supports the following protocols: Non-SPI.
> Calibrating delay loop... OK.
> No EEPROM/flash device found.
>
> this is what's written on the chip:
>
> 49LF080A
> 33-4C-NHE
> 0726291-B

That chip is supported.

> I discovered the board is a S2915 and not S2915-E, the only difference
> is that in the latter quad and six core cpus are supported, but I
> suppose that's not relevant for you.

True. Given that chip and chipset are supported and the chip doesn't
need a write enable function to respond to the ID command, I can only
assume that something between the CPU and the flash chip drops write
cycles to the flash chip. This is very odd, to say the least. Another
alternative explanation would be multiple flash chips on that board.

Regards,
Carl-Daniel

P.S. Joel, if you have test results for more Tyan boards, please send
them in. Current flashrom has a lot better error detection and other
nice features. It can even flash network cards, SATA controllers, and
some graphics cards, plus it supports external programmers for assisted
recovery.

-- 
Developer quote of the month: 
"We are juggling too many chainsaws and flaming arrows and tigers."

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