* bios@lists.actweb.info bios@lists.actweb.info [060630 19:42]:
EFST F498002UA 90N AZB1MFR29 0303
Good! This helps. The part is an EFST F49B002UA: http://www.esmt.com.tw/DB/manager/upload/F49B002UA.pdf
Is there a way to get the bios number from inside linux?
Yes. each flash chip has an identification sequence. Unfortunately there are different such sequences for different manufacturers. But all in all each flash chip has one byte vendor id and one byte device id.
Also, does this mean that there isnt anyway to get linuxbios working on my board? or is it just a case of writing a good image to the RD1 to get it working?
You can just write to the chip on the bios savior and leave the EFST alone (it has a good working bios image, right?) - Actually that is probably the best way to start.
the last time i used anything like this was when you had a small memory chip with built in battery that had an RTC in the upper 8 address bytes, and the rest was standard SRAM :)
The programming got a lot easier since then. The hardware a lot more complex. :-)
Im not sure what u mean by verifing that the image starts 25 a6??? are you talking about an image file taken from the BIOS using VIAs flash utility?
I thought that might be the vendor and device id. In fact it is 8c and 00, as it is a 256kb part
Stefan