Re: Issue with Intel Braswell & GD5LQ64

[Nico Huber]

Hello Dominique,

you should always keep the mailing list in the loop. This way you
wouldn't rely on a single person giving the answers :)

On 05.04.19 22:35, Dominique Wille wrote:
  What is strange is we can flash from DOS with the oem
flashing software
 without touching BIOS.
 So we guess there is maybe something missing in flashrom ?
Possible, but not necessarily. Flashrom is a simple tool to write
data to a flash chip. It doesn't care about the contents, just that
they are written correctly.

Updating the firmware of a modern mainboard, however, is a complex
process that may involve more than just writing data to the flash.
There are roughly three ways how the update process of that DOS tool
might look like:

 a) The tool "asks" the firmware to allow write access to the
    flash chip (then does what flashrom would do).
    - This is rather old school, but who knows? *shrug*

 b) The tool hands the data over to a program running in the firmware
    (usually involves SMM; that's also where the write protection is
    implemented).

 c) The tool writes the data to a specific memory location, and the
    update is done during the next reboot/resume (when the firmware
    is the only process running on the computer).

( d) A combination of b) and c) )

Only for case a), flashrom would be the correct program to use. But
that would still need a piece of code to talk to the running firmware
(what we call a board-enable).

I guess the best option would be to talk to the manufacturer of your
devices. And there is also LVFS [1]. The people there might even know
already how it works for your device.

Nico

[1] https://fwupd.org/