Re: [flashrom] [coreboot] New laptop: Lenovo ThinkPad X230 tablet, with dumps to go with it

[Peter Stuge]

Keith Hui wrote:
> At this point I'm mostly interested in just identifying the flash chip
> without disassembling the laptop, although I'm ready for that if
> necessary.

Try: flashrom -p internal:force=laptop_I_want_a_brick

flashrom is overly defensive on Thinkpads, where the Renesas EC
always has it's own flash.
> However, I do need to find a USB-based chip programmer that can do
> parallel, FWH and SPI.

No such thing in cheap. You can get a GALEP-5, which supports an
incredible range of devices, but which also costs >= 600 USD.

I want to make an open hardware+firmware design, but so far I haven't
made it beyond the USB protocol. http://git.stuge.se/?p=qiprog.git

//Peter

[coreboot] New laptop: Lenovo ThinkPad X230 tablet, with dumps to go with it

[Carl-Daniel Hailfinger]

Am 16.09.2012 05:00 schrieb Peter Stuge:
> Keith Hui wrote:
> > However, I do need to find a USB-based chip programmer that can do
> > parallel, FWH and SPI.
>
> No such thing in cheap. You can get a GALEP-5, which supports an
> incredible range of devices, but which also costs >= 600 USD.
>
> I want to make an open hardware+firmware design, but so far I haven't
> made it beyond the USB protocol. http://git.stuge.se/?p=qiprog.git

As a cheap starting point you could wire up a DIP8 socket and a PLCC32
socket to a Minimus USB (Atmega32U2) device. Those things are available
for ~12 USD, and they have enough GPIOs to drive LPC/FWH/SPI with ease,
and they speak native USB instead of USB-serial emulation. There's even
some code available for LPC/SPI on Atmega processors (originally written
for serprog usage) and you could reuse that easily.

IMHO that would qualify as cheap and readily available. You have to
solder the sockets and write the code yourself, though.

Regards,
Carl-Daniel