[flashrom] Asus Crosshair II Formula

[Stefan Tauner]

On Wed, 7 Sep 2011 23:54:35 -0500
"Leslie Rhorer" <lrhorer at satx.rr.com> wrote:

> 
> 	Well, yes, I would be interested in trying it, but only if I'm
> pretty sure it won't bork a $300 motherboard.  How confidant can I be that a
> failure will simply result in a BIOS that does not get written to the PROM,
> vs. smoke and flames, as it were?

statistically most (desktop and server) boards just work. then there are
quite many boards that are read-only without a board enable. and the
remaining few are somewhat more complicated. in most of those cases
writing the backup back usually saves the board. i actually can't
remember any cases when that did not work (but i am not that long
around...). most losses "caused" by flashrom are really caused by the
user shutting down when the flash is in an inconsistent state (although
flashrom screamed at them to not shut down and contact us) and very
old versions of flashrom.

but it is never 100% safe to upgrade a BIOS, not even with vendor
tools, so it is your choice... :)

> 
> 	I'm not sure I would know what a valid bios image should look like.
> I presume most of it would be machine code.  Undoubtedly there will be some
> text strings, but can I be assured if the code has any intelligible parts
> that it is good?  Should I send you the file?

please don't send any firmware binaries. they are copyrighted and we
are not allowed to publish them (which we would do automatically in our
mail archive). if you want someone to look at a file name the original
source or join our irc channel please.

> 	Assuming we can work around the write protections, if any, how good
> should I feel about a write to the board either working or failing

imho it is quite safe to try, if you make a backup before and have a
stable mains supply (or UPS), but i would hesitate too with such an
expensive board. :)

-- 
Kind regards/Mit freundlichen Grüßen, Stefan Tauner