Questions about Asus A88XM-E

All,
I have an Asus A88XM-E, and I am trying to install Coreboot on it.

1 ) The chip that came with the board says "GD25Q64(B)" (8192 kB, SPI). I think the chip definitely broken somehow. Everytime I tried to flashrom, it says

Erasing and writing flash chip... FAILED at 0x00000000! Expected=0xff, Found=0x00, failed byte count from 0x00000000-0x00000fff: 0xd0c

ERASE FAILED!

when I tried sudo flashrom -w build/coreboot.rom --programmer ch341a_spi, it says

Verifying flash... FAILED at 0x00000000! Expected=0x5f, Found=0xff, failed byte count from 0x00000000-0x007fffff: 0xb5

Your flash chip is in an unknown state.

I am having a hard time flashing back to original bios as well. Can I buy W25Q64FVAIG to replace? The chip says GD25B64BP1G . Is that caused by using 5 V to be broken? I only performed flashrom -w and flashrom -r .

2) For configuration, I copied this configuration:

https://review.coreboot.org/cgit/board-status.git/tree/asus/a88xm-e/4.12-328...

to .config and added the board. I have exported the vga bios from Linux using: cp /sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:01.0/rom vgabios.bin .

The above config does not work with make, it tries to go to a webpage for secondary payload, and that webpage is changed. Removing those two lines CONFIG_COREINFO_SECONDARY_PAYLOAD=y && CONFIG_TINT_SECONDARY_PAYLOAD=y will let me build the rom. When I do sudo flashrom -w build/coreboot.rom --programmer ch341a_spi, it sometimes says write done:

Erasing and writing flash chip... Erase/write done.

Verifying flash... FAILED at 0x00000000! Expected=0x5f, Found=0xff, failed byte count from 0x00000000-0x007fffff: 0xb5

Your flash chip is in an unknown state.

When I boot with Coreboot, I see a black screen. I renamed vgabios.bin to pci1002,990c.rom, and I put that file in the ~/Coreboot/ folder.

Thanks for helping out,

[Mike Banon]

Hi there friend,

For 1), did you plug a BIOS chip into a CH341A directly? Or using a
DIP-8 test clip? + would be nice if you have more than one CH341A and
could try with both of them to exclude a programmer's fault (one of my
ch341a had a missing capacitor and another had a badly soldered chip
leg). Yes, a BIOS chip could be dead, but instead of getting a
replacement 8MB chip you can get a larger 16MB one in a DIP-8 shape.
For example, W25Q128FVIQ - I saw a lot of 2pcs of them on AliExpress
for $2.19 with a free shipping (
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/4000539812523.html ) . May be a better
deal per pcs from the other sellers if you need more of these chips.
With 16MB chips, and coreboot taking less than 1MB, there's a big room
for some interesting experiments (floppy-based OS images like
KolibriOS, tiny Linux, etc.)

2) Yes, it's a known problem that a TINT payload link is dead, I've
submitted a patch with a new link but seems it hasn't been merged to a
coreboot master yet. So you'd need to either manually fix a link or
disable Tint. Coreinfo should be fine and you could enable it again.
> When I boot with Coreboot, I see a black screen

It's expected if you're having the flashing problems, I wonder what %
of coreboot.rom really got flashed.

3) For the sample configuration, what is this file?
CONFIG_PAYLOAD_CONFIGFILE="$(top)/src/mainboard/$(MAINBOARDDIR)/config_seabios"

This config file for SeaBIOS contains a few lines for disabling some
of the configs irrelevant for our board. For example, if A88XM-E
doesn't have a TPM header, could just remove the TPM support from a
SeaBIOS build for it and save like 20 KB of free space.

Hope this helps ;)

On Thu, Jan 14, 2021 at 4:18 AM magiccat1--- via coreboot
 wrote:
> All,
> I have an Asus A88XM-E, and I am trying to install Coreboot on it.
>
> 1 ) The chip that came with the board says "GD25Q64(B)" (8192 kB, SPI). I think the chip definitely broken somehow. Everytime I tried to flashrom, it says
>
> Erasing and writing flash chip... FAILED at 0x00000000! Expected=0xff, Found=0x00, failed byte count from 0x00000000-0x00000fff: 0xd0c
>
> ERASE FAILED!
>
> when I tried sudo flashrom -w build/coreboot.rom --programmer ch341a_spi, it says
>
> Verifying flash... FAILED at 0x00000000! Expected=0x5f, Found=0xff, failed byte count from 0x00000000-0x007fffff: 0xb5
>
> Your flash chip is in an unknown state.
>
> I am having a hard time flashing back to original bios as well. Can I buy W25Q64FVAIG to replace? The chip says GD25B64BP1G . Is that caused by using 5 V to be broken? I only performed flashrom -w and flashrom -r .
> For configuration, I copied this configuration:
>
> https://review.coreboot.org/cgit/board-status.git/tree/asus/a88xm-e/4.12-328...
>
> to .config and added the board. I have exported the vga bios from Linux using: cp /sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:01.0/rom vgabios.bin .
>
> The above config does not work with make, it tries to go to a webpage for secondary payload, and that webpage is changed. Removing those two lines CONFIG_COREINFO_SECONDARY_PAYLOAD=y && CONFIG_TINT_SECONDARY_PAYLOAD=y will let me build the rom. When I do sudo flashrom -w build/coreboot.rom --programmer ch341a_spi, it sometimes says write done:
>
> Erasing and writing flash chip... Erase/write done.
>
> Verifying flash... FAILED at 0x00000000! Expected=0x5f, Found=0xff, failed byte count from 0x00000000-0x007fffff: 0xb5
>
> Your flash chip is in an unknown state.
>
> When I boot with Coreboot, I see a black screen. I renamed vgabios.bin to pci1002,990c.rom, and I put that file in the ~/Coreboot/ folder.
>
> Thanks for helping out,
> _______________________________________________
> coreboot mailing list -- [e-mail]
> To unsubscribe send an email to [e-mail]

Hi Mike,

Thank you so much for your help,

I found out why Ch341a did not work.  It is outputting 5 V, when I replaced that with 3.3 V from Raspberry pi, everything works.  Raspberry pi is a good flashing tool.

Then I have seabios working.  I am total new to Seabios, when I put in a USB key and a SATA hard-drive, it always picks SATA hard-drive.  When I press delete key, there is no option to move to USB key.

I am not sure how to use seabios to boot with USB storage.

Thanks,

[Mike Banon]

I see. Hopefully your BIOS chip is resilient enough, as supplying 5V
instead of 3.3 V might have damaged it or reduced its reliability.
Even if you got one of the faulty CH341A with 5V instead of 3.3V, it's
possible to hardware mod it like
https://www.chucknemeth.com/usb-devices/ch341a/3v-ch341a-mod to make
it 3.3V.
In my opinion RPi is less secure than a simple tool like CH341A - so
even if you got the BIOS flashing working with RPi, repeating your
success with CH341A is still a worthy goal.

You need to press the ESCape key to open the SeaBIOS boot menu, not DELete.

On Sat, Jan 23, 2021 at 7:56 PM magiccat1--- via coreboot
 wrote:
> Hi Mike,
>
> Thank you so much for your help,
>
> I found out why Ch341a did not work.  It is outputting 5 V, when I replaced that with 3.3 V from Raspberry pi, everything works.  Raspberry pi is a good flashing tool.
>
> Then I have seabios working.  I am total new to Seabios, when I put in a USB key and a SATA hard-drive, it always picks SATA hard-drive.  When I press delete key, there is no option to move to USB key.
>
> I am not sure how to use seabios to boot with USB storage.
>
> Thanks,
> _______________________________________________
> coreboot mailing list -- [e-mail]
> To unsubscribe send an email to [e-mail]