[LinuxBIOS] Flash support for Sony Vaio laptop

[Geert Jansen]

Hello!

I just tried out the "flashrom" utility on my Sony Vaio VGN-FE11M laptop. I think some of my hardware is not supported, see the output below:

[gjansen@magellan flashrom]$ sudo ./flashrom
  Calibrating delay loop... ok
  No LinuxBIOS table found.
  Found chipset "ICH7M": Enabling flash write... OK.
  No EEPROM/flash device found.

Would it be difficult to add support for my flash device to LinuxBIOS? I would be willing to give it a try but I have no idea where to start... Any pointers would be very helpful.

Regards, Geert

[Peter Stuge]

On Wed, Jun 20, 2007 at 09:12:24PM +0200, Geert Jansen wrote:
> I just tried out the "flashrom" utility on my Sony Vaio VGN-FE11M
> laptop. I think some of my hardware is not supported,

I think most of your hardare is not supported. :\

The problem with laptops is that they usually have an extra
microcontroller (aka embedded controller aka EC) to do small bits of
this and that in the system. One such thing could be to control the
write signals to the flash chip.

No-one really knows how the ECs work so writing to flash becomes
difficult at best. (Writes are required in order to identify the
chip.)

Sorry about this. :\

Laptop support is being worked on but is still in very early stages.

//Peter

[Luc Verhaegen]

On Wed, Jun 20, 2007 at 10:37:54PM +0200, Peter Stuge wrote:
> On Wed, Jun 20, 2007 at 09:12:24PM +0200, Geert Jansen wrote:
> > I just tried out the "flashrom" utility on my Sony Vaio VGN-FE11M
> > laptop. I think some of my hardware is not supported,
>
> I think most of your hardare is not supported. :\
>
> The problem with laptops is that they usually have an extra
> microcontroller (aka embedded controller aka EC) to do small bits of
> this and that in the system. One such thing could be to control the
> write signals to the flash chip.
>
> No-one really knows how the ECs work so writing to flash becomes
> difficult at best. (Writes are required in order to identify the
> chip.)
>
> Sorry about this. :\
>
> Laptop support is being worked on but is still in very early stages.
>
> //Peter

Hrm,

Why would the lack of support for any laptop at this time in linuxbios 
itself influence the functionality of flashrom?

Geert: usually, to enable flash access, some more work is needed than 
just the common southbridge code. Devices tend to have specific things 
that need to happen as well.

This can be retrieved by reverse engineering the bios (although not 
all reverse engineering attempts are succesful - you need to find out 
where this code lives). For this, the lower 0x400 (6400) bytes, and 
0x000E0000 - 0x00100000 of memory are needed (on x86).

Not that i have much time currently, and i still have a few bioses i 
should still look at.

Luc Verhaegen.