On Wed, 7 Sep 2011 23:54:35 -0500 "Leslie Rhorer" lrhorer@satx.rr.com wrote:
Well, yes, I would be interested in trying it, but only if I'm pretty sure it won't bork a $300 motherboard. How confidant can I be that a failure will simply result in a BIOS that does not get written to the PROM, vs. smoke and flames, as it were?
statistically most (desktop and server) boards just work. then there are quite many boards that are read-only without a board enable. and the remaining few are somewhat more complicated. in most of those cases writing the backup back usually saves the board. i actually can't remember any cases when that did not work (but i am not that long around...). most losses "caused" by flashrom are really caused by the user shutting down when the flash is in an inconsistent state (although flashrom screamed at them to not shut down and contact us) and very old versions of flashrom.
but it is never 100% safe to upgrade a BIOS, not even with vendor tools, so it is your choice... :)
I'm not sure I would know what a valid bios image should look like. I presume most of it would be machine code. Undoubtedly there will be some text strings, but can I be assured if the code has any intelligible parts that it is good? Should I send you the file?
please don't send any firmware binaries. they are copyrighted and we are not allowed to publish them (which we would do automatically in our mail archive). if you want someone to look at a file name the original source or join our irc channel please.
Assuming we can work around the write protections, if any, how good should I feel about a write to the board either working or failing
imho it is quite safe to try, if you make a backup before and have a stable mains supply (or UPS), but i would hesitate too with such an expensive board. :)