JIDA CMOS

[Marc Ferland]

Hi all,

I work with kontron based COM boards. We currently use their home (DOS)
tools fptup and jidacmos to update the bios of our boards. These tools
work correctly but they must be run separatly from the rest of the
"factory" tools used to prepare the machines. Our current factory
tools use Linux to correctly update the different firmwares and
softwares we run on the machines. The only missing part is the BIOS.

So I am searching a way to integrate the BIOS update procedure to our
standard update procedure to simplify to whole process.

That being said, I tried the flashrom utility. I works for updating
the BIOS image, but doesn't seem to be able to update the
configuration part of the BIOS. The result is an updated BIOS version
with a wrong configuration (which fails to boot correctly).

Searching a little deeper, I found that to succesfully update the BIOS
on these boards, you not only have to update the BIOS image but you
also need to "pre-configure" it correctly. This is done by executing
the jidacmos DOS utility using the following cmds:

jidacmos rtc /clean
jidacmos eep /clean

So my question is: 
What is this jidacmos utility? Kontron doesn't give much details about it.

You guys have any idea of how I could reproduce the behaviour of the
jidacmos utility (cleaning the rtc and EEPROM I suppose)?

Any info would be appreciated!

Regards,

Marc

Tech info:
Board model: SU9300
Chipset: ICH9M
The board uses the: AT25DF321 chip.

[Carl-Daniel Hailfinger]

Hi Marc,

On 15.02.2010 18:00, Marc Ferland wrote:
> I work with kontron based COM boards. We currently use their home (DOS)
> tools fptup and jidacmos to update the bios of our boards.

Kontron developers contributed to flashrom in the past, and AFAIK they
are using a slightly modified flashrom version inhouse which can do
incremental writes. Mainline flashrom is now catching up with that (we
had to convert drivers for >200 chips first, and that took more time
than we had hoped).
> flashrom [...] works for updating
> the BIOS image, but doesn't seem to be able to update the
> configuration part of the BIOS. The result is an updated BIOS version
> with a wrong configuration (which fails to boot correctly).
>
> Searching a little deeper, I found that to succesfully update the BIOS
> on these boards, you not only have to update the BIOS image but you
> also need to "pre-configure" it correctly. This is done by executing
> the jidacmos DOS utility using the following cmds:
>
> jidacmos rtc /clean
> jidacmos eep /clean

Just to make sure I understand you correctly: Do you run jidacmos before
or after the BIOS update? And does it touch the BIOS update file or the
flash chip or the NVRAM?
> So my question is: 
> What is this jidacmos utility? Kontron doesn't give much details about it.
>
> You guys have any idea of how I could reproduce the behaviour of the
> jidacmos utility (cleaning the rtc and EEPROM I suppose)?

Heh. EEPROM and CMOS are probably the most abused terms for a piece of
computer hardware that's called NVRAM nowadays. On some modern machines,
the term EEPROM actually is correct because there's no NVRAM anymore and
firmware/BIOS stores everything in the flash chip (saves a few cents).

nvramtool may be useful for your task (which looks like clearing NVRAM),
but if there is no NVRAM in your machine, editing the BIOS image before
flashing may be the way to go.

Regards,
Carl-Daniel

[Marc Ferland]

At Tue, 16 Feb 2010 04:41:35 +0100,
Carl-Daniel Hailfinger wrote:
> Hi Marc,
>
> On 15.02.2010 18:00, Marc Ferland wrote:
> > I work with kontron based COM boards. We currently use their home (DOS)
> > tools fptup and jidacmos to update the bios of our boards.
>
> Kontron developers contributed to flashrom in the past, and AFAIK they
> are using a slightly modified flashrom version inhouse which can do
> incremental writes. Mainline flashrom is now catching up with that (we
> had to convert drivers for >200 chips first, and that took more time
> than we had hoped).
> > flashrom [...] works for updating
> > the BIOS image, but doesn't seem to be able to update the
> > configuration part of the BIOS. The result is an updated BIOS version
> > with a wrong configuration (which fails to boot correctly).
> >
> > Searching a little deeper, I found that to succesfully update the BIOS
> > on these boards, you not only have to update the BIOS image but you
> > also need to "pre-configure" it correctly. This is done by executing
> > the jidacmos DOS utility using the following cmds:
> >
> > jidacmos rtc /clean
> > jidacmos eep /clean
>
> Just to make sure I understand you correctly: Do you run jidacmos before
> or after the BIOS update? And does it touch the BIOS update file or the
> flash chip or the NVRAM?

I run jidacmos after the BIOS update, and no the BIOS isn't updated.
> > So my question is: 
> > What is this jidacmos utility? Kontron doesn't give much details about it.
> >
> > You guys have any idea of how I could reproduce the behaviour of the
> > jidacmos utility (cleaning the rtc and EEPROM I suppose)?
>
> Heh. EEPROM and CMOS are probably the most abused terms for a piece of
> computer hardware that's called NVRAM nowadays. On some modern machines,
> the term EEPROM actually is correct because there's no NVRAM anymore and
> firmware/BIOS stores everything in the flash chip (saves a few cents).
>
> nvramtool may be useful for your task (which looks like clearing NVRAM),
> but if there is no NVRAM in your machine, editing the BIOS image before
> flashing may be the way to go.

I've continued my search, and it looks like a JIDA32 kernel driver
exits along with a jidacmos utility for linux. I wonder why I didn't
see that before!

From the readme.txt:
The jidacmos linux tool enables you to save and restore the CMOS settings of
all supported Kontron CPU boards from within a Linux environment.

I'll also take a look at nvramtool.

Thanks for your time,

Marc

[Carl-Daniel Hailfinger]

On 16.02.2010 18:09, Marc Ferland wrote:
> At Tue, 16 Feb 2010 04:41:35 +0100,
> Carl-Daniel Hailfinger wrote:
> > nvramtool may be useful for your task (which looks like clearing NVRAM),
> > but if there is no NVRAM in your machine, editing the BIOS image before
> > flashing may be the way to go.
>
> I've continued my search, and it looks like a JIDA32 kernel driver
> exits along with a jidacmos utility for linux. I wonder why I didn't
> see that before!
>
> From the readme.txt:
> The jidacmos linux tool enables you to save and restore the CMOS settings of
> all supported Kontron CPU boards from within a Linux environment.
>
> I'll also take a look at nvramtool.

Judging from the readme, nvramtool should be usable as a full
replacement for jidacmos (at least the Linux variant), and nvramtool
doesn't need a kernel driver at all.

Regards,
Carl-Daniel

[Stefan Reinauer]

On 2/16/10 7:31 PM, Carl-Daniel Hailfinger wrote:
> > The jidacmos linux tool enables you to save and restore the CMOS settings of
> > all supported Kontron CPU boards from within a Linux environment.
> >
> > I'll also take a look at nvramtool.
>
> Judging from the readme, nvramtool should be usable as a full
> replacement for jidacmos (at least the Linux variant), and nvramtool
> doesn't need a kernel driver at all.

The Kontron boards use an i2c eeprom to back up nvram afaik. I think
that's what jidacmos is about.

I sniffed the smbus that is easily accessible with the headers of my
986lcd-m but there's only SPD-ROM traffic on that bus.

Kontron: Any information on this would be appreciated.

Best regards,
Stefan