[flashrom] BIOS doesn't change: WinSystems PC104 SBC

[Wells, Jay]

Hi Carl-Daniel,

I sent these files as .rtf some time ago, but I haven't seen any reply
that they were received or other feedback in reference to our issue. I
had included a PDF datasheet and wonder if the size of the attachments
created a problem for the email. Judging from all the other activity on
the message board, it sounds like you are quite busy. So, I am sending
only the data files as .txt again. I had installed what I thought to be
0.9.2 on the compact flash for this system, but for expediency I used
the latest version of Flashrom Live CD to get these files. Please let me
know if you get the data ok. 


Jay T. Wells
Automation Test Engineer IV
TransCore - AmTech Technology Center



-----Original Message-----
From: Carl-Daniel Hailfinger [mailto:c-d.hailfinger.devel.2006 at gmx.net] 
Sent: Friday, September 03, 2010 5:42 PM
To: Wells, Jay
Cc: flashrom at flashrom.org
Subject: Re: [flashrom] BIOS doesn't change

Hi Jay,

thanks for your report. It seems the flashrom version you're using is
ancient, and you might be hit by a few bugs which were present in
versions before 0.9.0.
Could you try flashrom 0.9.2 or even latest svn and send the output (as
root) of
flashrom -V
lspci -nnvvvxxx
superiotool -deV
so we can take a look at your configuration and figure out what's going
on? You can skip the superiotool step if superiotool is not installed
and/or won't compile.


On 04.09.2010 00:16, Wells, Jay wrote:
> I installed Flashrom on an older single board computer and read the
BIOS to a file which seemed to work fine.
>
> I noticed that both chips were listed on the wiki with ?'s
>
>  
>
> Atmel AT29C020   256  Parallel  ?  ?  ?  ? 
> VIA VT82C686A/B  1106:0686  ? 
>
> I then tried to write that file to an identical SBC and got the
following feedback:
>
> I thought it was strange that the -wv failed to verify, but -v
verified.
>   

Absolutely, but this might be an artifact of the old flashrom version
which didn't have the paranoid checks modern flashrom has.


> However after rebooting and checking the BIOS setup, nothing had
changed.
>
> Is there anything else I might try to get Flashrom to write the new
BIOS?
>   

Our goal is to have flashrom run fine everywhere, and reports like yours
are crucial for this. Once we have the requested info from you, we can
guide you further and/or directly give you a fix.


> # ./sbin/flashrom -wv NEWBIOS.bin 
>
> Calibrating delay loop... OK. 
>
> No coreboot table found. 
>
> Found chipset "VT82C686", enabling flash write... OK. 
> At29C020 found at physical address 0xfffc0000. 
> Flash part is At29C020 (256 KB). 
> Flash image seems to be a legacy BIOS. Disabling checks. 
> Programming page: 1023 at address: 0x0003ff00 
> Verifying flash... FAILED!  
>
> # ./sbin/flashrom -v NEWBIOS.bin 
> Calibrating delay loop... OK. 
> No coreboot table found. 
> Found chipset "VT82C686", enabling flash write... OK. 
> At29C020 found at physical address 0xfffc0000. 
> Flash part is At29C020 (256 KB). 
> Flash image seems to be a legacy BIOS. Disabling checks. 
> Verifying flash... VERIFIED.
>   

Yes, this is very odd. I definitely want to know what happened there,
and if this also happens with latest flashrom.


> Some background of system I'm using:
>
> Phoenix-AwardBIOS v6.00PG  1984-2003 
>
> Platform is running Fedora version 9
>
> The EPX-C3-G is a VIA C3-based [...] compliant with the EPIC (Embedded
Platform for Industrial Computing) standard.
>   

Regards,
Carl-Daniel

-- 
http://www.hailfinger.org/

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