[LinuxBIOS] LinuxBIOS/flashrom on Asus P2B

[Sam Brightman]

Hello,

I was wondering if someone could tell me whether LinuxBIOS will work with my 
setup (details below). At the moment I'm only hoping that flashrom works, as 
I have an updated BIOS from Asus but I'd also like to play with LinuxBIOS 
later. I've compiled and run flashrom -V from the "latest snapshot" link 
with nothing being detected. Details:

Asus P2B - Intel i440BX (Pentium II 400MHz)
Award BIOS
Winbond W83977TF-AW (SuperIO/Flash Chip?? Nearest to BIOS)

Below is the lcpci output.

0000:00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 440BX/ZX/DX - 82443BX/ZX/DX Host 
bridge (rev 03)
0000:00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 440BX/ZX/DX - 82443BX/ZX/DX AGP 
bridge (rev 03)
0000:00:04.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82371AB/EB/MB PIIX4 ISA (rev 02)
0000:00:04.1 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82371AB/EB/MB PIIX4 IDE (rev 
01)
0000:00:04.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82371AB/EB/MB PIIX4 USB (rev 
01)
0000:00:04.3 Bridge: Intel Corporation 82371AB/EB/MB PIIX4 ACPI (rev 02)
0000:00:0b.0 Ethernet controller: 3Com Corporation 3c900 10Mbps Combo 
[Boomerang]
0000:01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc Radeon RV100 QY 
[Radeon 7000/VE]

Any help appreciated,

[Stefan Reinauer]

* Sam Brightman  [060803 22:36]:
> Hello,
>
> I was wondering if someone could tell me whether LinuxBIOS will work with my 
> setup (details below). At the moment I'm only hoping that flashrom works, as 
> I have an updated BIOS from Asus but I'd also like to play with LinuxBIOS 
> later. I've compiled and run flashrom -V from the "latest snapshot" link 
> with nothing being detected.

Can you post the output?

[Sam Brightman]

Stefan Reinauer wrote:
> Sam Brightman  [060803 22:36]:
> > Hello,
> >
> > I was wondering if someone could tell me whether LinuxBIOS will work with my 
> > setup (details below). At the moment I'm only hoping that flashrom works, as 
> > I have an updated BIOS from Asus but I'd also like to play with LinuxBIOS 
> > later. I've compiled and run flashrom -V from the "latest snapshot" link 
> > with nothing being detected.
>
> Can you post the output?

I can indeed, but my home PC has changed its darn IP address so I'll 
have to send it this evening (UK time) when I can access it.

[Sam Brightman]

Hmm... not change of IP. Must remember to feed electricity meter!

Anyway, here is the output:

sam@wildthing:~/dev/LinuxBIOSv2/util/flashrom$ sudo ./flashrom -V
Password:
Calibrating delay loop... Setting up microsecond timing loop
188M loops per second
ok
No LinuxBIOS table found.
Trying Am29F040B, 512 KB
probe_29f040b: id1 0xff, id2 0xff
Trying Am29F016D, 2048 KB
probe_29f040b: id1 0xff, id2 0xff
Trying At29C040A, 512 KB
probe_jedec: id1 0xff, id2 0xff
Trying Mx29f002, 256 KB
probe_29f002: id1 0xff, id2 0xff
Trying SST29EE020A, 256 KB
probe_jedec: id1 0xff, id2 0xff
Trying SST28SF040A, 512 KB
probe_28sf040: id1 0xff, id2 0xff
Trying SST39SF010A, 128 KB
probe_jedec: id1 0xff, id2 0xff
Trying SST39SF020A, 256 KB
probe_jedec: id1 0xff, id2 0xff
Trying SST39SF040, 512 KB
probe_jedec: id1 0xff, id2 0xff
Trying SST39VF020, 256 KB
probe_jedec: id1 0xff, id2 0xff
Trying SST49LF040B, 512 KB
probe_jedec: id1 0xff, id2 0xff
Trying SST49LF040, 512 KB
probe_jedec: id1 0xff, id2 0xff
Trying SST49LF080A, 1024 KB
probe_jedec: id1 0xff, id2 0xff
Trying SST49LF002A/B, 256 KB
probe_jedec: id1 0xff, id2 0xff
Trying SST49LF003A/B, 384 KB
probe_jedec: id1 0xff, id2 0xff
Trying SST49LF004A/B, 512 KB
probe_jedec: id1 0xff, id2 0xff
Trying SST49LF008A, 1024 KB
probe_jedec: id1 0xff, id2 0xff
Trying Pm49FL002, 256 KB
probe_jedec: id1 0xff, id2 0xff
Trying Pm49FL004, 512 KB
probe_jedec: id1 0xff, id2 0xff
Trying W29C011, 128 KB
probe_jedec: id1 0xff, id2 0xff
Trying W29C020C, 256 KB
probe_jedec: id1 0xff, id2 0xff
Trying W49F002U, 256 KB
probe_jedec: id1 0xff, id2 0xff
Trying W49V002A, 256 KB
probe_jedec: id1 0xff, id2 0xff
Trying W49V002FA, 256 KB
probe_jedec: id1 0xff, id2 0xff
Trying W39V040A, 512 KB
probe_jedec: id1 0xff, id2 0xff
Trying W39V040B, 512 KB
probe_jedec: id1 0xff, id2 0xff
Trying M29F040B, 512 KB
probe_29f040b: id1 0xff, id2 0xff
Trying M29F400BT, 512 KB
probe_m29f400bt: id1 0xff, id2 0xff
Trying 82802ab, 512 KB
probe_82802ab: id1 0xff, id2 0xff
Trying 82802ac, 1024 KB
probe_82802ab: id1 0xff, id2 0xff
Trying F49B002UA, 256 KB
probe_jedec: id1 0xff, id2 0xff
Trying LHF00L04, 1024 KB
probe_lhf00l04: id1 0xff, id2 0xff
No EEPROM/flash device found.

[Sam Brightman]

For some reason I had ignored the other P2B-L thread, but it seems to 
suggest that one can indeed flash the (similar) chip. If anyone could 
tell me why this is not being detected at all, I'd be most appreciative. 
I should add that I have a spare board/chip, so I'd be quite happy to do 
some investigative work on this without worrying about losing the thing.

[Uwe Hermann]

Hi,

On Fri, Aug 04, 2006 at 07:02:30PM +0200, Sam Brightman wrote:
> Anyway, here is the output:

I have a similar problem (same output) with flashrom. Can you try
Uniflash (uniflash.org) and report whether it works?

Cheers, Uwe.

[Sam Brightman]

Uwe Hermann wrote:
> On Fri, Aug 04, 2006 at 07:02:30PM +0200, Sam Brightman wrote:
> > Anyway, here is the output:
>
> I have a similar problem (same output) with flashrom. Can you try
> Uniflash (uniflash.org) and report whether it works?

I was trying to avoid Uniflash because it seemed dated and DOS-ish. 
Granted I could probably get FreeDOS, but I've also gradually broken all 
my floppy drives over the years...

From what I can tell Uniflash, OpenBIOS and LinuxBIOSv1 have all been 
abandoned to a greater or lesser extent, yet the knowledge from them 
hasn't been used anywhere else? Is LinuxBIOSv2 a from-scratch effort? I 
think the chip used in this board was supported by /dev/bios, but I'm a 
bit unsure as to the state/stability of that given the non-activity on 
OpenBIOS.

Is this board fundamentally different from P2B-L? I should probably also 
mention that we have some pretty groovy-looking equipment at work that I 
could possibly use if basic reverse engineering is required. Only 
problem being my lack of hardware knowledge - there's something that 
looks like an oscilloscope but it says "impedance analyser" and I need 
to be told what to do with such equipment.

[Stefan Reinauer]

* Sam Brightman  [060807 18:43]:
> I was trying to avoid Uniflash because it seemed dated and DOS-ish. 
> Granted I could probably get FreeDOS, but I've also gradually broken all 
> my floppy drives over the years...
>
> From what I can tell Uniflash, OpenBIOS and LinuxBIOSv1 have all been 
> abandoned to a greater or lesser extent, yet the knowledge from them 
> hasn't been used anywhere else? Is LinuxBIOSv2 a from-scratch effort?

Uniflash works with everything because it does 16bit calls into the bios
image to enable flash writes. We can't really do that (or: heavily try
to avoid that) in Linux(BIOS)
> think the chip used in this board was supported by /dev/bios, but I'm a 
> bit unsure as to the state/stability of that given the non-activity on 
> OpenBIOS.

I am putting my efforts in the flashrom utility of LinuxBIOS instead and
I want to drop devbios once flashrom handles everything it needs to
handle.

Can you try to get devbios work (whether it finds the chip. no flashing
needed)
> Is this board fundamentally different from P2B-L? I should probably also 
> mention that we have some pretty groovy-looking equipment at work that I 
> could possibly use if basic reverse engineering is required.

You may want to look at the asus bios flashing hooks to find out what
they do. Be sure it is legal in your country to analyze foreign code
though.

Stefan