Hello,
I'm trying to put coreboot on a Lenovov Thinpad T530. I'm using a ch341a SPI flasher with the Pomona clip. I disassembled the mainboard to do a backup of the original BIOS image, but I think flashrom can not recognize the BIOS chips correctly. I tried to do the backup on both chips separately but they were BOTH recognized as a 8MB MX25L6405 Chip instead of a 4MB MX25L3206E and a 8MB MX25L3206E. Any suggestions?
I asked the same question on IRC, but I hate this shit IRC. By mistake I disconnected to the channel so I have no glue what was answered there. Maybe someone could be nice and send me the answeres on IRC.
Thanks
How big are the saved roms?
Could you actually save roms for both chips?
kinky greetings
Am 02.04.19 um 16:10 schrieb Yannik Catalinac:
Hello,
I'm trying to put coreboot on a Lenovov Thinpad T530. I'm using a ch341a SPI flasher with the Pomona clip. I disassembled the mainboard to do a backup of the original BIOS image, but I think flashrom can not recognize the BIOS chips correctly. I tried to do the backup on both chips separately but they were BOTH recognized as a 8MB MX25L6405 Chip instead of a 4MB MX25L3206E and a 8MB MX25L3206E. Any suggestions?
I asked the same question on IRC, but I hate this shit IRC. By mistake I disconnected to the channel so I have no glue what was answered there. Maybe someone could be nice and send me the answeres on IRC.
Thanks
coreboot mailing list -- coreboot@coreboot.org To unsubscribe send an email to coreboot-leave@coreboot.org
It was possible to save both chips.
They have both the size of 8 MiB.
But they are different images regard to the ckecksum.
Am 2. April 2019 17:31:12 MESZ schrieb Kinky Nekoboi kinky_nekoboi@nekoboi.moe:
How big are the saved roms?
Could you actually save roms for both chips?
kinky greetings
Am 02.04.19 um 16:10 schrieb Yannik Catalinac:
Hello,
I'm trying to put coreboot on a Lenovov Thinpad T530. I'm using a ch341a SPI flasher with the Pomona clip. I disassembled the mainboard to do a backup of the original BIOS image, but I think flashrom can not recognize the BIOS chips correctly. I tried to do the backup on both chips separately but they were BOTH recognized as a 8MB
MX25L6405
Chip instead of a 4MB MX25L3206E and a 8MB MX25L3206E. Any
suggestions?
I asked the same question on IRC, but I hate this shit IRC. By
mistake
I disconnected to the channel so I have no glue what was answered there. Maybe someone could be nice and send me the answeres on IRC.
Thanks
coreboot mailing list -- coreboot@coreboot.org To unsubscribe send an email to coreboot-leave@coreboot.org
Hello,
On Tue, Apr 2, 2019, 19:23 <yc-153434@hs-weingarten.de wrote:
It was possible to save both chips.
They have both the size of 8 MiB.
But they are different images regard to the ckecksum.
If one chip is a 4 MiB part and the other is a 8 MiB part, but you have read two 8 MiB chips, your chip enable pins are not driven properly (both chips end up being enabled at once) and what you read is very likely to be invalid data.
To prevent that, you would want to put a resistor between pin 1 and pin 8 on the inactive chip. The voltage on said pin 1 should then be 3.3 V, which would disable that chip. To connect this resistor, you can use a spare flash chip clip without a programmer.
Best regards,
Angel Pons
On 4/2/19 8:38 PM, Angel Pons wrote:
Hello,
On Tue, Apr 2, 2019, 19:23 <yc-153434@hs-weingarten.de wrote:
It was possible to save both chips.
They have both the size of 8 MiB.
But they are different images regard to the ckecksum.
If one chip is a 4 MiB part and the other is a 8 MiB part, but you have read two 8 MiB chips, your chip enable pins are not driven properly (both chips end up being enabled at once) and what you read is very likely to be invalid data.
To prevent that, you would want to put a resistor between pin 1 and pin 8 on the inactive chip. The voltage on said pin 1 should then be 3.3 V, which would disable that chip. To connect this resistor, you can use a spare flash chip clip without a programmer.
Hm interesting, never tried that.
Anyway I recall that I had issues with the T530 as well. I think I even bricked it, but then could flash it while it was powered on as the Pi didn't manage to drive the BIOS chip itself. There should be a thread on this mailing list (or the flashrom ML) from some years back.
I also recall that ME-Cleaner only worked with coreboot after flashing with an ME-cleaned factory BIOS.
KR David
Angel Pons wrote:
(both chips end up being enabled at once)
..
To prevent that, you would want to put a resistor between pin 1 and pin 8 on the inactive chip.
I'd suggest a 1k resistor between pin 4 (GND) and pin 7 (/HOLD) instead, since your situation is the purpose of the hold pin.
Verify that it works correctly by measuring a rather low voltage on pin 7, ideally 0 V but in practice up to 0.8 V is fine. If you measure an even higher voltage with the resistor connected then the mainboard design is such that the flash chip hold pin can't be used. You can still try Angel's suggestion.
The voltage on said pin 1 should then be 3.3 V, which would disable that chip.
The voltage in both our suggestions depends on the resistor value and on what circuit is on the mainboard. When any resistor is involved the voltage level will not be ideal, but possibly a fair bit off. On a 3.3 V flash chip any voltage on pin 1 (/CS) above 2.4 V is fine, it doesn't have to be 3.3 V. Also note that because pin 1 is actively used when communicating with the flash chip (as opposed to pin 7) you will only be able to measure the result of your resistor using an oscilloscope while either mainboard or your flasher is trying to access the flash chip. The voltage on pin 1 when there is no ongoing access isn't meaningful.
//Peter
I had this exact problem when I was trying to read my W530's chips with Raspberry Pi 3. Back then I ended up powering the motherboard using the Wake-on-Lan feature of Lenovo BIOS (and not connecting the VCC pin ofc), you can do the same and it should work but you have to be careful. But then I bought a ch341a programmer and it worked fine with W530. I'm not sure but maybe your ch341a doesn't have enough juice and that's why flashrom can't recognize chips reliably.
On 4/2/19 5:10 PM, Yannik Catalinac wrote:
Hello,
I'm trying to put coreboot on a Lenovov Thinpad T530. I'm using a ch341a SPI flasher with the Pomona clip. I disassembled the mainboard to do a backup of the original BIOS image, but I think flashrom can not recognize the BIOS chips correctly. I tried to do the backup on both chips separately but they were BOTH recognized as a 8MB MX25L6405 Chip instead of a 4MB MX25L3206E and a 8MB MX25L3206E. Any suggestions?
I asked the same question on IRC, but I hate this shit IRC. By mistake I disconnected to the channel so I have no glue what was answered there. Maybe someone could be nice and send me the answeres on IRC.
Thanks
coreboot mailing list -- coreboot@coreboot.org To unsubscribe send an email to coreboot-leave@coreboot.org
-
Angel Pons -
David Hobach -
Evgeny Zinoviev -
Kinky Nekoboi -
Peter Stuge -
Yannik Catalinac -
yc-153434＠hs-weingarten.de