On Asus M2V-MX running 'flashrom -E' fails with the following output:
flashrom v0.9.1-r771 No coreboot table found. Found chipset "VIA VT8237A", enabling flash write... OK. This chipset supports the following protocols: Non-SPI. Calibrating delay loop... OK. Found chip "SST SST49LF040B" (512 KB, LPC) at physical address 0xfff80000. Erasing flash chip... ERASE FAILED at 0x00000000! Expected=0xff, Read=0x41, failed byte count from 0x00000000-0x0000ffff: 0xfdea ERASE FAILED! ERASE FAILED! ERASE FAILED! FAILED! Your flash chip is in an unknown state. Get help on IRC at irc.freenode.net (channel #flashrom) or mail flashrom@flashrom.org! ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- DO NOT REBOOT OR POWEROFF!
The first character it is reading is 'A' and is part of the string 'ASUSTEK' in the dump I have.
Nothing was actually erased when I tried this. I've attached the output of 'flashrom -V', 'lspci -nnvvvxxx', 'superiotool -deV'. The official BIOS can be downloaded at http://www.asus.com/Product.aspx?P_ID=7grf8Ci4yxnqzt3z
Thanks, Michael Spang