flashrom

flashrom@flashrom.org

5 participants
9154 discussions

Re: Questions About Flashrom Of Gsoc
by Anastasia Klimchuk 25 Mar '22

25 Mar '22

Hi Hui, First of all, I wanted to say, you replied to me only and not to the mailing list (and I only noticed now). Most likely you clicked the "Reply" button instead of "Reply All". I am adding the mailing list back, but for future please keep in mind to Reply All. The most important reason is that if you send your questions to the mailing list, then everyone in our community can help you! Which is really good. You will have various questions, and you never know who is the best person to answer. So, pay attention that the mailing list is on the To line ;) Some things I can answer: >> The platform Gerrit is mentioned in the "Development Guidelines." All I know about it is that it is a code management tool. Are there any tutorial videos or articles that I can use to learn more about Gerrit? Gerrit is also a code review tool. Gerrit has an official website with lots of presentations, look here https://www.gerritcodereview.com/presentations.html , hopefully that's useful! >> I went to GitHub's official Flashrom mirror. You can browse all code on GitHub, no problem, and yes it can be a convenient way to browse. Just keep in mind GitHub is a mirror, so that's pretty much only for browsing code. When you start with trying to make changes by yourself, you need to set up flashrom git repository locally. When you come to that point, open https://review.coreboot.org/admin/repos/flashrom and choose your desired method to clone the repository. Supported methods are HTTPS and SSH. The same method will also be used when you push your changes to Gerrit later. >> My current devices are a Windows 11 laptop (processor 11370H, Tiger Lake-H35) and a Mac. Is it possible for me to try out some patches on my computer? Also, could you provide me with any resources or introductions to chip packaging (DIP32, PLCC32, DIP8...)? I am wondering if someone else can take these questions? We need community help on this :) Thanks! On Thu, Mar 10, 2022 at 6:59 AM Hui Xiang <zavier2001(a)outlook.com> wrote: > Dear Anastasia, > > > > Thank you for your response. I read the "Contributor Guidelines" and have > some questions. > > > > >> "work with our git repository." > > I went to GitHub's official Flashrom mirror. The repository contains a > large number of files. Which file would you recommend I start with if I > want to familiarize myself with the current codes on GitHub? The platform > Gerrit is mentioned in the "Development Guidelines." All I know about it is > that it is a code management tool. Are there any tutorial videos or > articles that I can use to learn more about Gerrit? > > > > >> "downloaded and built flashrom as well as applied some patches." > > My current devices are a Windows 11 laptop (processor 11370H, Tiger > Lake-H35) and a Mac. Is it possible for me to try out some patches on my > computer? Also, could you provide me with any resources or introductions to > chip packaging (DIP32, PLCC32, DIP8...)? I looked them up on Google, but > there is not much information about them. > > > > >> "Check Easy projects or ask for simple tasks on the mailing list or on > IRC." > > I went to the "Easy projects" page and decided to start my job with "Find > chips without voltage data." What can I do about it? Could you provide me > with any tips and advice? Thank you very much. > > > > I joined the IRC channel through Libera. Chat. My nickname is Hui_Xiang. > Is it necessary for me to install an IRC client on my computer? Thank you > for looking into this for me. I appreciate it. > > > > Best Regards, > > Hui > > > > > > *From:* Anastasia Klimchuk <aklm(a)chromium.org> > *Sent:* 09 March 2022 01:50 > *To:* flashrom(a)flashrom.org; Hui Xiang <zavier2001(a)outlook.com> > *Subject:* Re: [flashrom] Questions About Flashrom Of Gsoc > > > > Hello Hui, > > Nice to meet you! Great to know that you are interested to work with us > this Summer of Code! > > It is very good that you looked into the list of project ideas and are > interested in one of them, and your experience in C is very relevant. > > > What resources can I use to learn more about it? > > First thing, please have a read of our Contributor Guidelines > https://www.flashrom.org/GSoC especially the “Contributor commitments & > requirements” section, and see if you can gradually start with p.1 “Prior > to project acceptance, you need to demonstrate that you can work with the > flashrom codebase”. It is important that you complete all steps from 1 to 5. > Definitely tell us how it goes! You can reply to this email, tell us what > steps you did successfully, or if not, what are the problems. > > Also look into the “How to contact us” section, join our IRC channel and > say hello! :) > > Just in case, if you haven’t read these already, here are official > guidelines for gsoc program: > https://google.github.io/gsocguides/student/ > Rules https://summerofcode.withgoogle.com/rules (at least check p.7 from > here) > > > What skills do I need to improve to get accepted from Flashrom? > > For the project you are interested in, good knowledge of C language is a > critical skill. > > Thank you! > > Anastasia. > > > -- Anastasia.

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flashrom dev meeting notes 23.03.22
by Felix Singer 24 Mar '22

24 Mar '22

# Decisions on 23th March 2022: * Meeting times from not until November will alternate between two different times (to be voted upon) so that no one group will be excluded from every meeting. Time1 is EU+AU, Time2 is EU+US. * In the short term, any money collected for the Flashrom project, will be given to the coreboot project. coreboot will maintain a ledger for flashrom money. * We want a single build system (either Make or Meson). Anastasia will set up a separate meeting to discuss the “Makefile vs Meson” topic. * Next meeting will be in 2 weeks since there's still so much on the agenda. # 23th March 2022, 21:00-22:00 UTC+0 **Attendees: **Thomas, Michal, Felix, Anastasia, David, Nico, Patrick, Edward, Martin, Carl-Daniel **Agenda:** * [FelixS] Before we start discussing new topics, anything we need to discuss from the last meeting? * Leadership question is relevant to the item below, about fiscal sponsorship * [aklm] Reminder: daylight saving time is approaching. Next time we will use this time (21.00-22.00 UTC+0) in November. * For the next occurrence of dev meeting, Felix will send a poll to vote on days/times for the interval Apr-Sept. * In October we can have a vacation from each other (because there is a month diff when DST happens in different locations). * Martin: Can we have a schedule where the bad time rotates? So one out of every 3 times is poor for 1 group, but better for the other two. * Will do alternating times until november. Alternating between EU+AU and EU+US. * [Martinr] Should flashrom look for a fiscal sponsor so that it can accept donations? * [aklm] (possibly related) As an organization we can get some money per successful gsoc project (around 500 USD IIRC). Where do we put it? A bank account? * That's exactly the issue. In the past, before coreboot joined the SFC, the coreboot project had no way to accept donations, so the money was just donated directly to the SFC. By joining a fiscal sponsor, that allows money to be donated to the flashrom project to be used for purchasing test equipment, boards, servers, or whatever is needed. * [https://opensource.com/article/19/1/fiscal-sponsors-open-source](https://op… * [aklm] I just (10/03) got this comms from gsoc orgs: “For orgs who need to change their financial details for GSoC 2022, the deadline to have all of your Payoneer account information completed is July 15, 2022 as described in the Program Rules. We will not pay out stipends to any orgs who miss this hard deadline. We'll send more details about receiving stipends etc. in May so you'll have 2 months to get everything in order.” * It takes a long time to join a fiscal sponsor, so if flashrom is going to join a group, we're probably looking at 2023. * [FelixS] Since there is no legal entity around flashrom, we would have to create one first or a private person needs to take the money for now. In any case, this brings a lot of complicated implications and work (e.g. taxes). Can we just transfer the money to coreboot? * Since flashrom currently shares the coreboot infrastructure, in the short term, combining the financial interests makes sense. In the long term, we might want to look at having the projects be more separate, and getting a fiscal sponsorship for flashrom itself. * aklm will ask gsoc organizers on a mailing list, to get official reply whether 2 orgs can have the same account. * [Patrick] SFC needs some point of contact that can make decisions (e.g. about spending project money), so that's where the "leadership" thing came from in coreboot. They also strongly suggest to have at least 3 people and to avoid having outsized impact of any particular company contributing which informed how we defined our leadership group make up. * [aklm] Meson and Makefile. For upstream, Makefile is officially supported and used by developers, Meson is only used for unit tests. For chromium, Meson is officially supported and used for everything, including tests. Logically, these two should be in sync, since they are building the same code. Each side is interested in one build system (the one they are using). Can we join forces and keep two build systems in sync? * [FelixS] Thomas is about cleaning up both build systems and bringing them closer. * [Thomas] I’m working on getting the Makefile in a readable and usable state. A lot of configuration was / is done by C preprocessor macros. I’m trying to get rid of those. Since the meson.build is mostly a copy of the Makefile I want to update it when the Makefile is in a good shape. Currently the meson.build lags support for non Linux systems. I personally would prefer meson as a single build system, but we are not at this point yet. * [Edward and Martin] we need to test builds in both build systems until a single build system is selected. * [David] Are there any fundamental differences between the two build systems that cannot be resolved? We need to do gap analysis * [FelixS] I think Thomas mentioned a few things that can’t be done with Meson, or which are harder to do, but AFAIK he is working on it adding this functionality to upstream Meson. * [aklm] Do we all agree that we ideally have one build system? * YES! * Why did googlers decide to use meson? * [Edward] we want to use libflashrom instead of subprocessing, and that was supported well by meson. Also I have experience with both, and IMO meson is easier to maintain. Makefile is more ugly to do configurations for boards. * [Nico] secunet uses it in combination with FILO for firmware updates * [Thomas] I did lots of readability improvements and rework, but would like to switch to meson completely. It would be good to work with google to implement meson as the primary (and eventually only) build system. * Aklm to set up meeting (in 2 weeks from now) about meson and Makefile work, google will happily join this effort. Aklm is a google point of contact for the effort. * [Nico] Is meson capable of doing everything that Makefile is doing? Is ninja available on all platforms? * [CDH] if everything works for meson, I have no preference. But if not everything is working, then everyone will be unhappy. * [David] if we can cross-compile to DOS with meson, that would be a POC * [aklm] we do cross-compile with meson, just not for DOS * [Edward] How do we make it easy for new contributors to get involved in the project and grow the community to have more resources? * Improvements to community guidelines, * Improvements to developer documentation and expectations, * Convey appreciation to contributors and make them feel like no contribution is too small, * [aklm] Good news: this is exactly what we are doing right now! Literally, all of that starting from “How do we make it easy ….” to “.... no contribution is too small”. Importantly, these are not just words, but _lots of tasks to be done._ Since we got accepted to gsoc, already 6 people contacted us, they want to contribute. I really encourage everyone who can, to talk, respond to people, answer their questions, review their patches. I can quote myself from a previous meeting: “If you want to help and don’t know what to do, contact Anastasia or Felix.” * [dhendrix] Better automation. Git precommit hooks for style checks, etc. so that we don't waste review time telling newcomers where to put their braces, how to write a commit message, etc. * [FelixS] In my opinion, the website needs to be reworked. From my view, it’s not really inviting or motivating to read it. Also, many texts are outdated. * [David] What do we do about the GitHub mirror? Many issues and pull requests there, people are waiting for responses. * Edward suggests using [PRBot](https://github.com/ajdlinux/PRBot) * Martin: Do we want to add checks similar to coreboot's linters to the jenkins build? * Edward: Clang-format would be good. * [dhendrix]: revisit [https://review.coreboot.org/c/flashrom/+/44095](https://review.coreboot.org… ? * CDH: An automated message is much better than nothing. We need some sort of onboarding, and onboarding is always hard. * [aklm] Easy projects page, we need more easy projects for new people, please add if you have ideas. * [Nico] we have checkpatch set up for coreboot, I think this is a good thing, * [Martin] I think I can set this up. * [Martin] I can set up scan-build too * [Edward] we can display coverage in gerrit, contributors will see the progress for the changes in their patch? * [Thomas] note: tests are only for meson * [Martinr] The tests need to generate an output file, and a gerrit plugin needs to be added. coreboot currently has the files output, but the plugin isn't integrated yet. * [Felix] upstream pull requests as easy projects? * [Nico] These are not very easy projects, but there are unmerged patches on [patchwork](https://patchwork.coreboot.org/project/flashrom/list). We can see if there is some useful stuff there.

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flashrom dev meeting notes 9.03.22
by Felix Singer 24 Mar '22

24 Mar '22

# Decisions 9th March 2022 * Will make this meeting bi-weekly until we've worked our way through the issues listed here. # 9th March 2022, 21:00-22:00 UTC+0 Attendees: Anastasia Klimchuk, Felix Singer, Thomas Heijligen, Stefan Reinauer, Edward O’Callaghan, Maciej Pijanowski, Miklos Marton, Martin Roth, Nico, Carl-Daniel, Piotr, Angel Pons Agenda: * [FelixS] First flashrom meeting. Let’s introduce ourselves and say what we are working on at flashrom. * [FelixS] flashrom has been accepted to GSoC * [GSoC project page](https://summerofcode.withgoogle.com/programs/2022/organizations/flash… ) * [Official announcement](https://mail.coreboot.org/hyperkitty/list/flashrom@flashrom.o… ) * Current tasks? What is left to do? * [aklm] Respond to GSoC candidates, help and guide them * [aklm] Help improve [Development Guidelines](https://www.flashrom.org/Development_Guidelines), [Easy Projects](https://www.flashrom.org/Easy_projects) pages. * If you want to help and don’t know what to do, contact Anastasia or Felix. * [Martinr] Who is the flashrom leadership and how is that decided? * [Nico] For the last years this was rather implicitly who was maintaining the code to be safe and sound. And helping users on IRC and the ML and such. * Is this how the project wants to continue? It seems somewhat disorganized. Just because someone is a good coder doesn't necessarily make them a good leader. * Who decides "safe and sound"? Are there any metrics for this? * The coreboot project has 3 people who actually make the decisions. This was set up when we joined the SFC. Also the 3 leaders need to be from different companies. * SFC has a requirement that organisation defines its leadership. What exactly the leadership is, it is up to organisation, but there should be some leadership". And that's how coreboot got leadership: coreboot wanted to join SFC, so needed to define leadership. * Which means, if flashrom wants to join SFC we need leadership too * Nico: In the past there wasn't much to decide, so there was no need for official leadership. * [Anastasia] We need someone to make decisions after a discussion on the mailing list if there isn't a clear direction. * [Edward] Some kind of election process, [Martin] organized the vote system for coreboot. * [Nico] There are currently two different projects in one repo, so if the leadership picks one, there might end up being two projects? * [Martinr] How are decisions made in the flashrom project? In this meeting, on the mailing list, something else? * [Nico] So far for smaller topics on IRC. For bigger topics, I suggest the mailing list. * [Thomas and Felix] Before deciding on leadership we need to talk more to each other. This is the first meeting we see each other and talk. We need to talk more about development, code, need to know more what we are doing. * Conclusion: let’s everyone think about it and continue discussion later. Topic added to Ongoing Items. * [Martin/Nico] Should we split flashrom into two separate projects? * Nico when I started, the project was for everyone, and stability was a priority. * Now we're trying to add the google fork, which has different objectives. * Edward: This isn't a different objective. * Quality is degrading. * Is code even tested? * Edward: yes, there's a strong emphasis on testing and improving tests. * Felix: what is tested? Is this unit testing? * Google tests any paths that they have available for testing. * Intel, AMD, Linux, mtd, Dediprog, raiden debug. * In the past, we kept all the code working for generic systems, so when support was added for a chip, it works for all of them, or bails out early. * New code is for specific boards, but not documented * [Martin] So let's focus on testing and make stability branches. * Nico: There's nobody to do that testing. * Felix: with the jenkins replacement, I'm thinking about how to add hardware tests as a part of the CI. * Miklos: There was someone who had boards with spi roms on boards with multiplexers for testing. \ Referred to this [document about the Chromium team’s hardware test setup.](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1IoBR7rHXJFiahC6dGnNKqaNFfg-q89_… ) * [Edward] Exactly this has come up between a discussion originally Martin and latter with Nikolai Artemiev to get CI coverage for writeprotect changes. * [Edward] We need to document testing what testing is done on the wiki. * Google is working on testing and making sure that the tests can be run by anyone. * [Edward]: First part of this is upstream-first unit-testing efforts, second part harder. * [Edward]: We need to get boards hooked for E2E tests, looking at what is happening for coreboot CI? * [Piotr] aklm on IRC just received commit rights without any previous discussion [[1]](https://matrix.to/#/!SAlNdlJiEjYGbpbVfu:libera.chat/$eKIApfMuImHqA9T0TowmUaTylyfJAOWTn9iK0q7itQk?via=matrix.org&via=libera.chat&via=nixos.dev ) * [Martinr] Anastasia has earned her commit rights with 125 commits over the past 2 years, more than anyone else. She is active in the community. She has done more than 82 reviews, more than anyone but Angel, Edward, and Nico. If she doesn't deserve her commit rights, Angel, Edward and Nico are the only ones who do. The discussion about commit rights is listed below, but as mentioned there, IMO, Thomas is the only other person who has earned commit rights. * [Nico] Edward’s history in the project is quite unique. He got the submit rights before he landed a single patch and with close to 0 prior activity in the project. So we can’t really put him above or below anyone in this matter. * We can absolutely look at commits and reviews that he's done since then. * [Nico] I don’t think we can decide this matter simply on the amount of patches / reviews. * [Martin] So what are your thoughts on how people should get +2? Is this also the "safe and sound" rule? You don't give any suggestions here. * [Piotr] How to get patch submitting rights in flashrom? We have 4 patches in +2 for some time: [[1]](https://review.coreboot.org/c/flashrom/+/55713/), [[2]](https://review.coreboot.org/c/flashrom/+/55714), [[3]](https://review.coreboot.org/c/flashrom/+/55714), [[4]](https://review.coreboot.org/c/flashrom/+/55848/) * Current Submitters * Anastasia Klimchuk * Angel Pons * Carl-Daniel Hailfinger * David Hendricks * Edward O'Callaghan * Idwer Vollering * Nico Huber * Patrick Georgi * Stefan T * Urja Rannikko * The only other person that has a significant number of commits in the last 5 years is Thomas Heijligen with 83 commits since July 2019. Thomas seems like a good candidate for getting submit rights. * What are the criteria for giving someone +2? When is someone ready, and who makes that decision? * coreboot has a relatively loose criteria for adding people, but decisions are made by the leadership. * Felix: Change the process about how patches are merged * Maybe require 2 +2s? * In case patches are merged too early, request that patches stay on gerrit for greater than 2 days or so? * [Carl-Daniel] We have different strategies, availability. Reviews are harder than writing code. We need to give people time to do reviews. Maybe we need to give 2 weeks time for reviewers. Unless some really bad bug which kills machines. * We have different modes of working on code, different goals. * Nico: 2 weeks is probably too long. * [Angel] too many patches sometimes, too little time. Very stressful. Patches pile up, not enough time to review and respond to everything. A feeling that if I miss something and do not respond in time then things will go wrong (e.g. errors missed during review). * [Anastasia] maybe if reviewer is busy, they can send a message to gerrit saying “sorry I am busy for next X weeks, I will get back to you after X weeks, thanks”, and this gives information to patch owner. Makes a big difference.

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Flashrom Dev Meeting once a month?
by Anastasia Klimchuk 22 Mar '22

22 Mar '22

Hello Everyone, One good idea came up recently: to organize a “Flashrom Developers Meeting” so that we can talk to each other, discuss current development and future plans! The idea is, specifically, to have it regularly - and once a month seems just about right. The attendance will be, obviously, entirely optional, however one thing is important: to take notes from what has been discussed (and notes should be public). The main two questions are: when? (time) and which software to use. Time is a tricky question, and it depends on who is going to attend the meeting. We can optimize either for EU-US or for EU-AU. I can say for sure, we have at least one person from AU who is going to attend ;) (that’s me). If it turns out that we have people all over the planet who want to attend, and there is no one time that suits all, then as a plan B we can alternate between two options. That will be time1 and time2 alternating. Software. What do people use and like? I am used to Google Meet, and don’t know much about other options. What do people think of the idea? Let’s discuss! -- Anastasia.

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Adding some details to the dev guidelines wiki page
by Nikolai Artemiev 21 Mar '22

21 Mar '22

Hi everyone! As a follow up to https://review.coreboot.org/c/flashrom/+/58477 and https://review.coreboot.org/c/flashrom/+/58480, I want to update the section "Adding/reviewing a new flash chip" of the dev guidelines <http://flashrom.org/Development_Guidelines> with documentation for two new chip data fields that were added: - `.reg_bits` stores information about what configuration bits the chip has and where they are found. For example,`.cmp = {STATUS2, 6, RW}` indicates that the chip has a complement bit (CMP) and it is the 6th bit of the 2nd status register. See `struct reg_bit_info` in flash.h for details on each of the structure's fields. Note that some chips have configuration bits that function like TB/SEC/CMP but are called something else in the datasheet (e.g. BP3/BP4/...). These bits should be assigned to a field according their function and the datasheet name should be noted in a comment, for example: ``` .sec = {STATUS1, 6, RW}, /* Called BP4 in datasheet, acts like SEC */ ``` - `.decode_range` points to a function that determines what protection range will be selected by particular configuration bit values. It is required for writeprotect operations on the chip. Let me know if the text is alright, thanks! Cheers, Nik

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Re: FAILED: Joshua-H61-uATX
by Nico Huber 14 Mar '22

14 Mar '22

Hello Zack, your message got filtered because of the attachment. We have a limit of 200KiB for this mailing list because things are sent to a lot of people. I've scaled the image down. Regarding your problem, I don't think it is IME related. A locked region would already make trouble during the initial read. There are likely additional protections by your BIOS in effect. A full log might give us more information. If you append `-o logfile.txt` to your command that logfile would get written. For the moment I suggest you to try to write a backup back if you made one. It's possible that flashrom didn't write anything, but we don't know. Nico On 13.03.22 03:41, Zack Gibbs wrote: > Motherboard spec: > > https://support.hp.com/us-en/document/c03135925 > > Hello there. I've attempted to flash my bios however I have portions of the IME that are locked. > > At the bottom of the screen is the last command I ran,. > > Thanks for your help, > > Zack Gibbs >

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Request for Assistance with FLASHROM
by Karani Vinay Kumar 14 Mar '22

14 Mar '22

Hello Flashrom team! I'm new to open source and I have some prior knowledge on C programming language. I would like to participate in GSOC with Flashrom. Give me some suggestions to how do I start and work on this.

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Help !
by Guillaume Rallon 11 Mar '22

11 Mar '22

Hello, I request your help for a little problem. I try to unbrick my MSI Gaming 5 Z97 motherboard, using flashrom using a raspberry Pi 4b vi the JSPI1 port. I plugged it like this : Hold 0V o o WP 3.3V x o o o GND CLK o o CS SI-SO o o SO-SI o o VCC The plugin seems to be good as Flashrom detects the chipset as a Winbond W25Q64.V The battery of the mother board is removed, no other external current source plugged. When I launch the writing sequence everything goes flawlessly and the problem appears during the flash verification. I receive this message : Verifying flash... FAILED at 0x00000014! Expected=0x03, Found=0x02, failed byte count from 0x00000000-0x007fffff: 0x3d6c96 Your flash chip is in an unknown state. I tried to put HOLD at 3.3V and let the CMOS battery but it is always the same message. Maybe my chipset has an internal defect ? If yes, I think I can buy a new chip and solder it but it's a brutal solution ;) I would really be pleased if you could give me at least a clue. Best regards Guillaume RALLON The whole messages are below : flashrom -p linux_spi:dev=/dev/spidev0.0,spispeed=512 -w /home/Yogiadmin/flashrom/E7917IMS.190 flashrom v1.2-644-g79e2bd0 on Linux 5.10.92-v8+ (aarch64) flashrom is free software, get the source code at https://flashrom.org Using clock_gettime for delay loops (clk_id: 1, resolution: 1ns). Found Winbond flash chip "W25Q64.V" (8192 kB, SPI) on linux_spi. Reading old flash chip contents... done. Erasing and writing flash chip... Erase/write done. Verifying flash... FAILED at 0x00000014! Expected=0x03, Found=0x02, failed byte count from 0x00000000-0x007fffff: 0x3d6c96 Your flash chip is in an unknown state. Please report this to the mailing list at flashrom(a)flashrom.org or on IRC (see https://www.flashrom.org/Contact for details), thanks! -- RALLON Guillaume 19 CHEMIN DE LA RETARDIERE 44700 ORVAULT FRANCE 06 79 69 15 60

2 1

Experimental GD25Q40(B) support
by Wolf Dieter Brandt 09 Mar '22

09 Mar '22

2 1

EN25F10 read/write support log files
by Wolf Dieter Brandt 09 Mar '22

09 Mar '22

Here you go! Thanks fro this great tool!

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