On Wed, 11 Jul 2012 18:17:19 -0400 Jason_Vannest@abercrombie.com wrote:
If I'm reading the flashrom site correctly this is one of the flash chips that flashrom has support for already. So that might be a plus.
Yes, the flash chip itself wont be a problem.
There is a service manual for the POS located at ftp://ftp.software.ibm.com/software/retail/pubs/hw/4800_surepos700/btd5_4800-723-743-783_hsg_mst.pdf and it mentions a "backup bios" in the service processor section. That could complicate things further (or help you out if something fails if you are very lucky, but usually it make things worse for us). The remainder of the document is not very helpful (targeted at users not developers).
I'd venture a guess that we can do this before IBM can even give you a quote.
What kind of information would you want? I have pretty solid connections with IBM I may be able to get questions answered about this.
A schematic that contains the data path between the southbridge and the flash chip as well as its relation to the Renesas IC would indicate if we have to take care about the Renesas at all. Any additional information regarding the BIOS upgrade process (e.g. if the version of the Renesas' firmware has to be kept in sync with the BIOS) or the service processor's interaction with the flash chip would be very welcome too.
Above all we need to work on the support for the VIA chipset (VT8251), but IBM won't be able to help us with that. I have no news regarding that.