Greetings,
I tried to flash this system with an updated bios using flashrom utility. The flash chip found was a "SST 49LF008A". I successfully read the flash to a filename, verified the image read and determined the flash chip on the board.
I still have the system up and running.
Information on the motherboard can be found at: http://us.axiomtek.com/Products/ViewProduct.asp?view=780
Are there other options available to resurrect the Bios?
Best regards,
Ken Frost
Greetings,
Some more info from flashrom utility:
root@sysresccd /root % flashrom flashrom v0.9.3-r1205 on Linux 2.6.38-std221-i586 (i686), built with libpci 3.1.7, GCC 4.4.5, 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 Poulsbo", enabling flash write... OK. This chipset supports the following protocols: FWH. Found chip "SST SST49LF008A" (1024 KB, FWH) at physical address 0xfff00000. No operations were specified. root@sysresccd /root %
Regards,
Ken Frost
On 09/06/2011 05:13 PM, Kenneth Frost wrote:
Greetings,
I tried to flash this system with an updated bios using flashrom utility. The flash chip found was a "SST 49LF008A". I successfully read the flash to a filename, verified the image read and determined the flash chip on the board.
I still have the system up and running.
Information on the motherboard can be found at: http://us.axiomtek.com/Products/ViewProduct.asp?view=780
Are there other options available to resurrect the Bios?
Best regards,
Ken Frost
On Tue, 06 Sep 2011 17:13:37 -0400 Kenneth Frost kfrost@oemcontrols.com wrote:
Greetings,
I tried to flash this system with an updated bios using flashrom utility. The flash chip found was a "SST 49LF008A". I successfully read the flash to a filename, verified the image read and determined the flash chip on the board.
(the verifying operation just re-reads the image from the flash and compares it with the file)
I still have the system up and running.
Information on the motherboard can be found at: http://us.axiomtek.com/Products/ViewProduct.asp?view=780
Are there other options available to resurrect the Bios?
"resurrect"? what is wrong exactly? you did not mention anything going wrong yet ;) please provide a verbose log too please (by adding the -V parameter) while you are at it.
ah. i overlooked the topic sorry.
you wrote that you have read the flash to a file. was that before or after the (first) write attempt? if it was before i.e. you have made a backup and it still verifies, then you should be good. flashrom (even 0.9.3 iirc which was succeeded lately) should have told you then that nothing has changed when failing to write.
the output of the failed write would also be very interesting (even more in verbose mode).
Hi Stefan,
Thanks for answering.
Before I did the write I backed up the bios to a file and verified it. All was OK. I then performed a write using a new updated flash bios. The write failed and also left the flash in a state where the bios will not function. Verification of the original saved flash now fails. I have not shutdown the system yet. Do you need the data sheet for the SST 49FL008A flash?
The error returned from the write is:
root@sysresccd /mnt/windows/AXIOMTEK % flashrom -VVV -w 84823XH.003 > write.txt ERASE FAILED at 0x00000000! Expected=0xff, Read=0x40, failed byte count from 0x00000000-0x00000fff: 0x8c2 ERASE FAILED! ERASE FAILED at 0x00000000! Expected=0xff, Read=0x40, failed byte count from 0x00000000-0x0000ffff: 0x84a 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 with FAILED: your board name in the subject line! ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- DO NOT REBOOT OR POWEROFF! root@sysresccd /mnt/windows/AXIOMTEK %
The verbose output from the command above is attached as write.txt
Regards,
Ken Frost
On 09/06/2011 06:23 PM, Stefan Tauner wrote:
ah. i overlooked the topic sorry.
you wrote that you have read the flash to a file. was that before or after the (first) write attempt? if it was before i.e. you have made a backup and it still verifies, then you should be good. flashrom (even 0.9.3 iirc which was succeeded lately) should have told you then that nothing has changed when failing to write.
the output of the failed write would also be very interesting (even more in verbose mode).
On Tue, Sep 6, 2011 at 2:13 PM, Kenneth Frost kfrost@oemcontrols.comwrote:
Greetings,
I tried to flash this system with an updated bios using flashrom utility. The flash chip found was a "SST 49LF008A". I successfully read the flash to a filename, verified the image read and determined the flash chip on the board.
Hi Ken, I would guess that there is some GPIO-controlled write protection mechanism enabled on that board. Sometimes you can disable these thru BIOS settings, though it's entirely up to the vendor whether or not to expose that.
Of course, rebooting and toggling that setting in the BIOS is sort of a pain and probably unfeasible if you wish to support more than a small handful of motherboards. So it's usually preferable to toggle that setting in Flashrom. In Flashrom's board_enable.c file, you'll see several routines which do things like raise a GPIO to disable write protection. You'll probably need to do something similar for your board.
If you're reasonably familiar with the chipset you're using (SCH US15WPT), you can try to determine the write protection setting experimentally. Here is one example of how to do it: http://www.coreboot.org/pipermail/coreboot/2009-September/051987.html .
Much of the tedious info such gathering and calculating base addresses and offsets can be found from flashrom verbose output when you perform a read operation. iotools http://code.google.com/p/iotools/ can also make your life easier when doing simple low-level operations.
-
David Hendricks -
Kenneth Frost -
Stefan Tauner