Thank you Ivan.

As I mentioned, I did try with/without the board plugged in, and with/without the VCC pin connected to the programmer. (I also tried, on an identical board that still has a booting BIOS, powering it on to a point that likely has no BMC traffic.)

One thing that we have determined, using a scope, is that the VCC pin does likely get appropriate voltage, but the signals on the MOSI pin are not at a high enough voltage: The voltage at the MOSI pin, when signals are being sent, is about 1/2 VCC. This explains why it almost always isn't successful at finding the chip, but every once in a while, on a rare occasion, it is.

So now the question is, why is the voltage on the MOSI pin too low - what is pulling it down.

I'm getting identical results with both the Dediprog SF100 and a Bus Pirate (not sure which version). And I did try the trick on the Bus Pirate where you apply the VCC voltage to the Bus Pirate's VUP (pull-up voltage) pin, and used the flashrom argument to turn on the pull-ups.

Thanks,

Yaron

On Wed, Nov 22, 2017 at 10:29 AM, Ivan Ivanov <qmastery16@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi Yaron, please read about the In-System Programming. It could be
that the peripheral devices of your motherboard are consuming some
percentage of the power that was aimed to power a BIOS chip during the
access - because of that, there is not enough power for a BIOS chip
and your attempts are failing. What to do:

I) You could try to reduce the amount of peripheral devices - e.g.
disconnect the RAM modules from your system and try again

II) Also you can try to power a BIOS chip by the motherboard :
1) disconnect a VCC wire from your programmer, also disconnect WP and
HOLD just in case
2) disconnect all the boot devices from your motherboard
3) connect a clip to a BIOS chip
4) connect a power adapter to your motherboard and turn it on
5) just in case, wait 5 minutes so that all the initialization
processes will be completed
6) read the contains of a BIOS chip a few times
7) compare the checksums of read files, if they are the same - erase
the BIOS chip (by filling it with FF's), turn off the motherboard,
then turn it on again, wait 5 minutes - then flash your desired binary
image to this BIOS chip

III) Alternatively you may want to de-solder a BIOS chip from
motherboard and connect it to your programmer with DIP adapter, but
probably could be avoided if you do I) or II) successfully

IV) Try a different programmer, e.g. CH341A which is super cheap
simple hardware fully supported by flashrom - should be reliable

I wish you good luck, sadly Supermicro X10DRT-Lis not supported by
coreboot open source BIOS - hopefully you will be able to get a better
hardware one day...

Best regards,

2017-11-21 17:57 GMT+03:00 Yaron Shragai <yshragai.firmware@gmail.com>:
> Hello,
> I am trying to use flashrom to program a Winbond W25Q128FV chip, on a
> Supermicro X10DRT-L mobo, with a Dediprog SF 100.
>
> I am running flashrom from an Ubuntu VM on a Win10 laptop as well as from a
> Minnowboard Max system running Ubuntu.
> I am running flashrom v0.9.9-rc1-r1942, installed via apt.
> I am connecting to the chip via a SOIC clip.
>
> I should note that I have looked at the product support data on the flashrom
> web site. It lists full support for the W25Q128FV. It does not list the
> X10DRT-L mobo.
>
> flashrom almost never "sees" the flash chip (output: "No EEPROM/flash device
> found.").
>
> I say "almost", b/c it did see it a couple of times (out of, I would say,
> ~100 tries) - which was enough for me to read out the pre-existing content,
> and write to it an image that has effectively bricked it. :-) So, now I'm
> trying to flash the pre-existing content back... (There is no documented
> way to force the X10DRT-L to use the recovery block, and I have yet to find
> an undocumented way...)
>
> I have tried with the system board plugged in and unplugged, and with and
> without connecting the VCC pin to the programmer.
>
> I have been using these two command lines, at various times:
> flashrom -p dediprog
> flashrom -p dediprog:voltage=3.5
>
> When I add -VVV, the following relevant lines appear in the output:
>
> Probing for Winbond W25Q128.V, 16384 kB: programmer_map_flash_region:
> mapping W25Q128.V from 0x00000000ff000000 to 0x0000000000000000
> dediprog_spi_send_command, writecnt=1, readcnt=3
> RDID returned 0xff 0xff 0xff. RDID byte 0 parity violation.
> probe_spi_rdid_generic: id1 0xff, id2 0xffff
> programmer_unmap_flash_region: unmapped 0x0000000000000000
>
> ...and further down...
>
> Probing for Winbond unknown Winbond (ex Nexcom) SPI chip, 0 kB:
> dediprog_spi_send_command, writecnt=1, readcnt=3
> RDID returned 0xff 0xff 0xff. RDID byte 0 parity violation.
> probe_spi_rdid_generic: id1 0xff, id2 0xffff
>
> One more datapoint: When I connect my laptop -> Dediprog -> to the flash
> chip on the Minnowboard Max (Micron 25Q064A), it does recognize the chip.
>
> Any advice would be appreciated!
>
> Thanks,
> Yaron
>

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