First the success. I upgraded the BIOS on a Supermicro X8DT3 without problem.
I upgraded it to version 2.0a of the BIOS with a release date of 09/14/2010.
I was asked to send a flashrom -V, attached.
The bad news, my Supermicro X8SIE completely bricked. During the flash: # flashrom -w x8sie0.527 flashrom v0.9.2-r1141 on Linux 2.6.38-8-generic (x86_64), built with libpci 3.1.7, GCC 4.5.1, little endian flashrom is free software, get the source code at http://www.flashrom.org
Calibrating delay loop... OK. No coreboot table found. Found chipset "Intel 3420", enabling flash write... OK. This chipset supports the following protocols: FWH,SPI. Found chip "Atmel AT25DF321" (4096 KB, SPI) at physical address 0xffc00000. Flash image seems to be a legacy BIOS. Disabling checks. Writing flash chip... Erasing flash before programming... Erasing flash chip... spi_block_erase_20 failed during command execution at address 0x0 spi_block_erase_52 failed during command execution at address 0x0 Verification impossible because read failed at 0x1000 (len 0x100) ERASE FAILED! spi_chip_erase_60 failed during command execution Verification impossible because read failed at 0x1000 (len 0x100) ERASE FAILED! 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!
I tried to read the image to see if I could tell if it was either the old ROM or the new: flashrom -r old-unknown.rom Reading flash... Read operation failed! FAILED. Found chipset "Intel 3420", enabling flash write... OK. This chipset supports the following protocols: FWH,SPI. Found chip "Atmel AT25DF321" (4096 KB, SPI) at physical address 0xffc00000.
I found a rather promising mention in the manual of taking a USB key and copying the BIOS image (x8sie0.527 in this case) to super.rom then hold down <Ctrl> and <Home> simultaneously during bootup. Said system turns on, network lights come on, motherboard controlled fans come up. The USB's devices LEDs however never light.
I suspect it's a loss, but I'm open to suggestions.
If I do replace it I'll get another LGA1156 single socket server motherboard. Any motherboard that's known to work with flashrom would be a bonus.