Hi!
I tried to flash a new BIOS to my AOpen i965GMt-LA motherboard. Reading the ROM worked, but flashing did not. I'll gladly give you more information, just tell me what you need. :-)
Cheers, Björn
$ sudo flashrom --programmer internal -c "W39V040FA" -w IGC1B.BIN flashrom v0.9.9-rc1-r1942 on Linux 4.4.0-112-generic (x86_64) flashrom is free software, get the source code at https://flashrom.org
Calibrating delay loop... OK. Found chipset "Intel ICH8M". Enabling flash write... OK. Found Winbond flash chip "W39V040FA" (512 kB, FWH) mapped at physical address 0x00000000fff80000. Reading old flash chip contents... done. Erasing and writing flash chip... FAILED at 0x00000000! Expected=0xff, Found=0x49, failed byte count from 0x00000000-0x00000fff: 0x463 ERASE FAILED! Reading current flash chip contents... done. Looking for another erase function. FAILED at 0x00000000! Expected=0xff, Found=0x49, failed byte count from 0x00000000-0x0000ffff: 0x463 ERASE FAILED! Reading current flash chip contents... done. Looking for another erase function. FAILED at 0x00000000! Expected=0xff, Found=0x49, failed byte count from 0x00000000-0x0007ffff: 0x60915 ERASE FAILED! Looking for another erase function. No usable erase functions left. FAILED! Uh oh. Erase/write failed. Checking if anything has changed. Reading current flash chip contents... done. Good, writing to the flash chip apparently didn't do anything. This means we have to add special support for your board, programmer or flash chip. Please report this on IRC at chat.freenode.net (channel #flashrom) or mail flashrom@flashrom.org, thanks! ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- You may now reboot or simply leave the machine running.
Hello Björn,
On 20.02.2018 12:57, Björn Tantau wrote:
Hi!
I tried to flash a new BIOS to my AOpen i965GMt-LA motherboard. Reading the ROM worked, but flashing did not. I'll gladly give you more information, just tell me what you need. :-)
boards of that generation often have a write-protection pin of the flash chip asserted (often only to prevent accidentally writing to the flash). There is no standard for this, so that pin could be connected to any- thing, e.g. a jumper on the board, a GPIO of another chip (maybe con- trolled by a BIOS setup option or by the vendor flash application). In the latter case, flashrom would need something we call a board-enable procedure to toggle the GPIO.
Please consult your board's documentation for anything flash related. If you can't find something, you can try to find the board's schematics to figure out if there's a write-protection pin and where it is connec- ted to. Reverse engineering the vendor's flashing tool would also work.
Nico
Am 22. Februar 2018 17:56:31 MEZ schrieb Nico Huber nico.h@gmx.de:
Hello Björn,
On 20.02.2018 12:57, Björn Tantau wrote:
I tried to flash a new BIOS to my AOpen i965GMt-LA motherboard.
Reading
the ROM worked, but flashing did not. I'll gladly give you more information, just tell me what you need. :-)
boards of that generation often have a write-protection pin of the flash chip asserted (often only to prevent accidentally writing to the flash). There is no standard for this, so that pin could be connected to any- thing, e.g. a jumper on the board, a GPIO of another chip (maybe con- trolled by a BIOS setup option or by the vendor flash application). In the latter case, flashrom would need something we call a board-enable procedure to toggle the GPIO.
Please consult your board's documentation for anything flash related. If you can't find something, you can try to find the board's schematics to figure out if there's a write-protection pin and where it is connec- ted to. Reverse engineering the vendor's flashing tool would also work.
Hi Nico,
unfortunately the only jumper on the board is used to clear the CMOS. Reverse engineering seems to be the only option left. Unfortunately I'm not well versed in these arcane arts. ;-)
Thanks for your help, Björn
Is it possible for you to tear down your computer and directly attach some test clip to a BIOS chip (e.g. SOIC8 test clip if your BIOS chip is SOIC8 format) ? That will bypass the write protection and no soldering is required. However, if your BIOS chip has a weird format for which no test clip exists, you would have to desolder a BIOS chip from your board and put it to some adapter connected to flasher
Best regards, Mike
On Thu, Feb 22, 2018 at 10:40 PM, Björn Tantau bjoern@bjoern-tantau.de wrote:
Am 22. Februar 2018 17:56:31 MEZ schrieb Nico Huber nico.h@gmx.de:
Hello Björn,
On 20.02.2018 12:57, Björn Tantau wrote:
I tried to flash a new BIOS to my AOpen i965GMt-LA motherboard.
Reading
the ROM worked, but flashing did not. I'll gladly give you more information, just tell me what you need. :-)
boards of that generation often have a write-protection pin of the flash chip asserted (often only to prevent accidentally writing to the flash). There is no standard for this, so that pin could be connected to any- thing, e.g. a jumper on the board, a GPIO of another chip (maybe con- trolled by a BIOS setup option or by the vendor flash application). In the latter case, flashrom would need something we call a board-enable procedure to toggle the GPIO.
Please consult your board's documentation for anything flash related. If you can't find something, you can try to find the board's schematics to figure out if there's a write-protection pin and where it is connec- ted to. Reverse engineering the vendor's flashing tool would also work.
Hi Nico,
unfortunately the only jumper on the board is used to clear the CMOS. Reverse engineering seems to be the only option left. Unfortunately I'm not well versed in these arcane arts. ;-)
Thanks for your help, Björn
flashrom mailing list flashrom@flashrom.org https://mail.coreboot.org/mailman/listinfo/flashrom
On Thu, Feb 22, 2018 at 08:40:58PM +0100, Björn Tantau wrote:
Reverse engineering seems to be the only option left. Unfortunately I'm not well versed in these arcane arts. ;-)
I held a talk about this in 2010 at FOSDEM.
Here is the pdf of it:
https://people.freedesktop.org/~libv/flash_enable_bios_reverse_engineering_(...
Your BIOS is an award and should be trivial.
Luc Verhaegen.
On Sun, Feb 25, 2018 at 11:49:40AM +0100, Luc Verhaegen wrote:
On Thu, Feb 22, 2018 at 08:40:58PM +0100, Björn Tantau wrote:
Reverse engineering seems to be the only option left. Unfortunately I'm not well versed in these arcane arts. ;-)
Your BIOS is an award and should be trivial.
Provide an lspci -vn and a run of sensors-detect.
My current hypothesis: smsc at 0x480
Action required: 0x48E |= 0x10.
Luc Verhaegen.
Am 19.03.2018 um 00:08 schrieb Luc Verhaegen:
On Sun, Feb 25, 2018 at 11:49:40AM +0100, Luc Verhaegen wrote:
On Thu, Feb 22, 2018 at 08:40:58PM +0100, Björn Tantau wrote:
Reverse engineering seems to be the only option left. Unfortunately I'm not well versed in these arcane arts. ;-)
Your BIOS is an award and should be trivial.
Provide an lspci -vn and a run of sensors-detect.
My current hypothesis: smsc at 0x480
Action required: 0x48E |= 0x10.
Here you go.
Cheers, Björn
On Mon, Mar 19, 2018 at 05:01:06PM +0100, Björn Tantau wrote:
Am 19.03.2018 um 00:08 schrieb Luc Verhaegen:
My current hypothesis: smsc at 0x480
Action required: 0x48E |= 0x10.
Do you want to scan for Super I/O sensors? (YES/no): Probing for Super-I/O at 0x2e/0x2f Trying family `VIA/Winbond/Nuvoton/Fintek'... Yes Found `Winbond W83627DHG Super IO Sensors' Success! (address 0x290, driver `w83627ehf')
Hrm. Perpendicular to what the bios that i got from AOpen tells me.
Please mail a copy of your existing rom to me personally (exclude the flashrom ml, binary blobs should not go there).
Luc Verhaegen.
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Björn Tantau -
Luc Verhaegen -
Mike Banon -
Nico Huber