On Sun, 02 Sep 2012 21:01:30 +0200 Edwin Wijburg erw@wijburg-en-kremer.nl wrote:
Yesterday I contacted you via IRC because of a possible flash failure on my Jetway J7F4K9G2 motherboard. Luckily the error was not severe as a --verify confirmed an intact bios (thanks again for the online help!). I used an old flashrom version from the Debian squeeze repositories and was advised to upgrade to at least the version in testing. I compiled from source.
What I am trying (off course) is to ascertain if my bios can be flashed with flashrom. I do have the latest bios for this board but it was cumbersome to make a flash usb stick with freedos, fiddle with the bios settings to get my board to boot the stick, well, you know ....... (why else flashrom?)
Your wiki-list shows one Jetway family member that works with flashrom (the J7F4K1G5D-PB). I'd like to be able to tell you mine works with it as well (so it can be added to the list).
Now, when I probe the motherboard flashrom tells me that it has two flashchips (the old flashrom didn't do that). Which one is the one to use? I've included the flashrom's output for the probe and read actions on the respective chips.
the behavior changed because we added the second chip. they have the same logical ID, but differ subtly in their locking mechanisms. this will not matter in your case afaics. if you want to be sure check the marking on the flash chip and compare to the datasheets (or ask).
what does matter though, is that the write protection pin is still asserted. you said that there is a bios option to enable flashing. if that is already enabled, then this boards need some work before it will work with flashrom, but i presume the option is still disabled? there might also be a jumper on the board that influences this...
The motherboard has in fact two NIC biosses as well. But I didn't compile with external programmers so I imagine the probe then should not find those?
if the nics are supported you would need to use the -p/--programmer switch to select it e.g. -p nicintel_spi.
In the wiki you clearly state that testing an erase and write should only be done when I have an alternative bios chip at hand. And I don't. Should I stop the experimenting alltogether or are there other ways to find out if chances are good that my board will be flashable?
writing firmwares is always a risk, (e.g. power outage) and it is just not worth to take that risk just for another entry in our wiki IMHO.
btw why are there 0 search results on any search engine for "J7F4K9G2"?