16.11.2012 6.35 "Stefan Tauner" <stefan.tauner@student.tuwien.ac.at> kirjoitti:
>
> On Thu, 15 Nov 2012 20:31:18 +0200
> Ville Herva <vherva@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Ripping the battery off for a good while helped, and I was able to upgrade
> > the BIOS at POST.
>
> usually there is also a jumper (CMOS or NVRAM reset) that does the same.

Usually, yes, but according to the manual, the jumper only clears the bios passwords. There was a faq entry at the Intel site recommending ripping the battery off to clear the bios settings. Given that, i decided to rip the battery as the first measure as it was just as easy as fiddling with the jumper.

> > Anyway, it would be cool to be able to flash BIOS from Linux.
>
> that is (or was) the goal of course, but intel (and microsoft) try to
> block access to the flash chip more and more to have more control over
> what the user can run. they try to sell this as a security feature, but
> that is only a part of it. if it would be about security only, then the
> user would be in control. in the secure boot scheme on x86 machines the
> user IS in control about the boot loader certificates, but this is only
> out of fear of competition laws IMHO.
>
> ATM it IS possible to flash the BIOS region, even if other regions are
> locked. we just do not know if it is safe in all cases or if the
> management engine interferes (as this is not documented anywhere
> publicly) and hence give the warnings. in the future (i.e. starting
> with the haswell family of processors) flashrom will most probably be
> crippled even more on these platforms according to recently leaked
> information.
>
> so... nag intel please, not us ;)
> see also
> http://blogs.coreboot.org/blog/2011/08/17/gsoc-2011-flashrom-part-5-–-dear-intel/
> --
> Kind regards/Mit freundlichen Grüßen, Stefan Tauner

Yep, interesting. Sadly not all development is going towards openness. And probably never will as long as there's money involved.