As usual sorry for late reply, I had to wait for a board to lay my hand on.

Answers to requested data is below.

Carl-Daniel Hailfinger wrote: 
Hi everyone,

one possible explanation of the failing chip probes is the amount of RAM
in the tested machines. The common pattern of the failing machines seems
to be that they have more than 3 GB (or more than 2 GB) of RAM.
Depending on BIOS and kernel versions, this might result in cached
mapping of the flash chip and that will cause probing to fail.

So if those who have problems detecting the flash chip could physically
remove some RAM to get down to 2 GB (or less) and run flashrom again in
verbose mode (please use unpatched latest flashrom), that might give us
a hint about what is failing here.

Those who have working flash detection: Please tell us how much RAM you use.
I installed 2GB of ram in this first run of tests.

Besides that, it would be great if you could:
- tell us the exact BIOS version

4.01.2915

- tell us the exact kernel version

debian linux-image-2.6.32-2-amd64 version 2.6.32-7

- send in the first 200 lines of your dmesg (preferably directly after boot)

attached file flashrom-cold-output-2gb.txt

- send the contents of /proc/mtrr

reg00: base=0x000000000 (    0MB), size= 2048MB, count=1: write-back

- send the contents of /sys/kernel/debug/x86/pat_memtype_list (may need
mounted debugfs).
PAT memtype list:
uncached-minus @ 0x7fde3000-0x7fdea000
uncached-minus @ 0x7fde9000-0x7fdea000
uncached-minus @ 0x7fde9000-0x7fdea000
uncached-minus @ 0x7fde9000-0x7fdea000
uncached-minus @ 0x7fde9000-0x7fdea000
uncached-minus @ 0x7fde9000-0x7fdea000
uncached-minus @ 0x7fde9000-0x7fdea000
uncached-minus @ 0x7fde9000-0x7fdea000
uncached-minus @ 0x7fde9000-0x7fdea000
uncached-minus @ 0x7fdea000-0x7fdeb000
uncached-minus @ 0x7fdea000-0x7fdeb000
uncached-minus @ 0xb0000000-0xb0004000
uncached-minus @ 0xb0004000-0xb0005000
uncached-minus @ 0xb0005000-0xb0006000
uncached-minus @ 0xb0006000-0xb0007000
uncached-minus @ 0xb0007000-0xb0008000
uncached-minus @ 0xb0008000-0xb0009000
uncached-minus @ 0xb0009000-0xb000a000
uncached-minus @ 0xb000b000-0xb000c000
uncached-minus @ 0xb0104000-0xb0105000
uncached-minus @ 0xb0300000-0xb0301000
uncached-minus @ 0xb3000000-0xb312c000
uncached-minus @ 0xe0000000-0xe0700000
uncached-minus @ 0xfed00000-0xfed01000

Please do this for your current config and for the config with less RAM
(and tell us which is which).
And now the same info with 4G of ram, of course with same kernel and bios version.

- send in the first 200 lines of your dmesg (preferably directly after boot)

attached file flashrom-cold-output-4gb.txt

- send the contents of /proc/mtrr

reg00: base=0x000000000 (    0MB), size= 2048MB, count=1: write-back
reg01: base=0x080000000 ( 2048MB), size=  512MB, count=1: write-back
reg02: base=0x0a0000000 ( 2560MB), size=  256MB, count=1: write-back

- send the contents of /sys/kernel/debug/x86/pat_memtype_list (may need
mounted debugfs).

PAT memtype list:
uncached-minus @ 0xafde3000-0xafdea000
uncached-minus @ 0xafde9000-0xafdea000
uncached-minus @ 0xafde9000-0xafdea000
uncached-minus @ 0xafde9000-0xafdea000
uncached-minus @ 0xafde9000-0xafdea000
uncached-minus @ 0xafde9000-0xafdea000
uncached-minus @ 0xafde9000-0xafdea000
uncached-minus @ 0xafde9000-0xafdea000
uncached-minus @ 0xafde9000-0xafdea000
uncached-minus @ 0xafdea000-0xafdeb000
uncached-minus @ 0xafdea000-0xafdeb000
uncached-minus @ 0xb0000000-0xb0004000
uncached-minus @ 0xb0004000-0xb0005000
uncached-minus @ 0xb0005000-0xb0006000
uncached-minus @ 0xb0006000-0xb0007000
uncached-minus @ 0xb0007000-0xb0008000
uncached-minus @ 0xb0008000-0xb0009000
uncached-minus @ 0xb0009000-0xb000a000
uncached-minus @ 0xb000b000-0xb000c000
uncached-minus @ 0xb0104000-0xb0105000
uncached-minus @ 0xb0300000-0xb0301000
uncached-minus @ 0xb3000000-0xb312c000
uncached-minus @ 0xe0000000-0xe0700000
uncached-minus @ 0xfed00000-0xfed01000

I expect some very interesting revelations.

I hope this helps!

Alex

On 28.01.2010 21:05, Phil wrote:
  
Michael Karcher wrote:
    
We are still having inconsistent results. As a summary of mails on the
flashrom list about the S2915(-E):

21.10.2009, Alessandro Polverini (r736): No chip found
03.12.2009, Alessandro Polverini (r791+GPIO4): No chip found
19.01.2010, Phil (r710): No chip found
28.01.2010, Allesandro Polverini, other board (r884): Chip found
(SST49LF080A)
21.01.2010, Nicolas Aveline (r877;HP board): No chip found
08.12.2009, Joel Robertson (r710): Chip found (SST49LF080A)
      

Thanks for your cooperation.

Regards,
Carl-Daniel