Hi,
I'm thinking about porting coreboot to a FM2A88X Extreme4+ board. This board has a DIP8 flash with a socket and I wondered what would be the best way to do an efficient development cycle. Ideally, I suppose that the best option would be to use a clip test and a CH341A, but all the clips that I found are SOIC/SOP. Should I buy a SOIC clip and an adapter from SOIC to DIP? I've seen those adapters, but I'm not sure if they will fit well in the mobo DIP8 socket.
Aside from the mechanical question, I'd appreciate any advice about the safety of externally programming the board. I don't have the schematics and I wonder if there could be any risk of damaging the board.
Cheers.
Hi Pedro,
On 27.11.21 00:02, Pedro Erencia wrote:
I'm thinking about porting coreboot to a FM2A88X Extreme4+ board. This board has a DIP8 flash with a socket and I wondered what would be the best way to do an efficient development cycle. Ideally, I suppose that the best option would be to use a clip test and a CH341A, but all the clips that I
the CH341A is a rather slow programmer and the most popular version uses 5V i/o while you most likely need 3.3V. I would rather use something FT*232H based (the H is important, it's high-speed and speaks SPI) or maybe a stm32 "blue-pill" with firmware from [1].
found are SOIC/SOP. Should I buy a SOIC clip and an adapter from SOIC to DIP? I've seen those adapters, but I'm not sure if they will fit well in the mobo DIP8 socket.
Not sure what adapter you are talking about. Clips are not good for development anyway; they are most useful if you want to program a device just once and then go on with the next device. What I would do (but not sure if I'd recommend that): Solder wires somewhere at to the tops of the DIP8 legs. So you could still plug it into the socket. Or maybe I would try to squeeze some stranded wire along with the chip into the socket. Anyway, I would consider something more professional, see below.
Aside from the mechanical question, I'd appreciate any advice about the safety of externally programming the board. I don't have the schematics and I wonder if there could be any risk of damaging the board.
To be safe, there should be some sort of isolation between the mainboard components and the programmer. If you don't have schematics of the main- board, you can't tell if there is any on the board already, and I would suggest a "qspimux" [2]. Usually a connector for it is soldered to the board, but it should be possible to use a DIP8 socket too.
Nico
[1] https://github.com/dword1511/stm32-vserprog [2] https://github.com/felixheld/qspimux
you could end up "bricking" the motherboard.
On Fri, Nov 26, 2021 at 3:02 PM Pedro Erencia perencia@gmail.com wrote:
Hi,
I'm thinking about porting coreboot to a FM2A88X Extreme4+ board. This board has a DIP8 flash with a socket and I wondered what would be the best way to do an efficient development cycle. Ideally, I suppose that the best option would be to use a clip test and a CH341A, but all the clips that I found are SOIC/SOP. Should I buy a SOIC clip and an adapter from SOIC to DIP? I've seen those adapters, but I'm not sure if they will fit well in the mobo DIP8 socket.
Aside from the mechanical question, I'd appreciate any advice about the safety of externally programming the board. I don't have the schematics and I wonder if there could be any risk of damaging the board.
Cheers.
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Hi Pedro,
On Fri, Nov 26, 2021 at 11:02 PM Pedro Erencia perencia@gmail.com wrote:
Hi,
I'm thinking about porting coreboot to a FM2A88X Extreme4+ board. This board has a DIP8 flash with a socket and I wondered what would be the best way to do an efficient development cycle. Ideally, I suppose that the best option would be to use a clip test and a CH341A, but all the clips that I found are SOIC/SOP. Should I buy a SOIC clip and an adapter from SOIC to DIP? I've seen those adapters, but I'm not sure if they will fit well in the mobo DIP8 socket.
I wouldn't recommend a CH341A for the same reasons Nico explained, and would suggest the same alternatives.
I've done a lot of development on the Asrock B85M Pro4 (a completely different board, but also has a socketed DIP8 flash chip) and, for me, the most efficient development cycle is to use a flash emulator like the Dediprog EM100. However, flash emulators aren't cheap. Before I had the EM100, I simply moved the flash chip back and forth by hand, from the mainboard to a breadboard wired to a CJMCU FT2232HL mini module (external programmer) and viceversa. I added another DIP8 socket between the flash chip and the mainboard's socket, so that I could easily and quickly remove and replace the flash chip.
Aside from the mechanical question, I'd appreciate any advice about the safety of externally programming the board. I don't have the schematics and I wonder if there could be any risk of damaging the board.
If you remove the flash chip from the mainboard to reflash it, it's practically impossible to damage the board.
Cheers.
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Best regards, Angel
Hi friends, if you are serious about CH341A - get a version with a green PCB board, it's more likely to give you 3.3V (instead of the erroneous 5V which the bugged version of black CH341A could be giving). And just in case, verify the output pins with a multimeter, to see it's really a 3.3V... Also, why do you need a test clip at all? If your board has DIP8 flash chip, most likely it's inside a socket - and possible to remove using a PLCC / DIP8 remover, to directly plug into the "flashrom-supported" programmer like CH341A.
flash emulator like the Dediprog EM100
That's very interesting, never heard of it :) Although they are quite expensive
сб, 27 нояб. 2021 г. в 21:39, Angel Pons th3fanbus@gmail.com:
Hi Pedro,
On Fri, Nov 26, 2021 at 11:02 PM Pedro Erencia perencia@gmail.com wrote:
Hi,
I'm thinking about porting coreboot to a FM2A88X Extreme4+ board. This board has a DIP8 flash with a socket and I wondered what would be the best way to do an efficient development cycle. Ideally, I suppose that the best option would be to use a clip test and a CH341A, but all the clips that I found are SOIC/SOP. Should I buy a SOIC clip and an adapter from SOIC to DIP? I've seen those adapters, but I'm not sure if they will fit well in the mobo DIP8 socket.
I wouldn't recommend a CH341A for the same reasons Nico explained, and would suggest the same alternatives.
I've done a lot of development on the Asrock B85M Pro4 (a completely different board, but also has a socketed DIP8 flash chip) and, for me, the most efficient development cycle is to use a flash emulator like the Dediprog EM100. However, flash emulators aren't cheap. Before I had the EM100, I simply moved the flash chip back and forth by hand, from the mainboard to a breadboard wired to a CJMCU FT2232HL mini module (external programmer) and viceversa. I added another DIP8 socket between the flash chip and the mainboard's socket, so that I could easily and quickly remove and replace the flash chip.
Aside from the mechanical question, I'd appreciate any advice about the safety of externally programming the board. I don't have the schematics and I wonder if there could be any risk of damaging the board.
If you remove the flash chip from the mainboard to reflash it, it's practically impossible to damage the board.
Cheers.
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Best regards, Angel _______________________________________________ coreboot mailing list -- coreboot@coreboot.org To unsubscribe send an email to coreboot-leave@coreboot.org
On Sat, Nov 27, 2021 at 10:39 AM Angel Pons th3fanbus@gmail.com wrote:
Before I had the EM100, I simply moved the flash chip back and forth by hand, from the mainboard to a breadboard wired to a CJMCU FT2232HL mini module (external programmer) and viceversa. I added another DIP8 socket between the flash chip and the mainboard's socket, so that I could easily and quickly remove and replace the flash chip.
I've done this as well. A couple parts recommendations to make this easier: - High quality DIP8 sockets with rounded legs such as https://www.digikey.com/short/q0522m77. Those tend to be much easier to insert and remove into a motherboard's socket than flash chips which have flimsy legs and will help prevent damage to the mainboard socket when removing and inserting the chip repeatedly. And if you need to solder something, it's better to do it on one of these sockets than soldering to the motherboard or the chip itself.
- If you have your programmer connected to a breadboard, keep a ZIF DIP test socket like this mounted in place to make inserting and removing the chip quick and easy: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32708487337.html.
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Angel Pons -
David Hendricks -
Ivan Ivanov -
Ken Pillay -
Nico Huber -
Pedro Erencia