Difference of factory bios and dumped image

[Prakash Punnoor]

Hi,

flashrom kind of works on my system, but not with the factory images. If I 
read it out with flashrom and write it back with flashrom (also to a different 
chip) it works. The sizes of factory and dumped image are same but they are 
somewhat binary different. Any idea? The motherboard is Abit A-S78H. As I am 
playing around with coreboot - so far unsuccessfully - I want to know whether 
flashrom is writing the generated image correctly... I can upload both images 
somewhere if interested. This is flashrom output on my system:

flashrom v0.9.4-r1395 on Linux 3.2.0-rc7+ (x86_64), built with libpci 3.1.7, 
GCC 4.5.2, little endian
flashrom is free software, get the source code at http://www.flashrom.org

Calibrating delay loop... OK.
Found chipset "AMD SB700/SB710/SB750/SB850". Enabling flash write... OK.
This chipset supports the following protocols: LPC, FWH, SPI.
Found Macronix flash chip "MX25L8005" (1024 kB, SPI) at physical address 
0xfff00000.
No operations were specified.

Regards,

Prakash

[Paul Menzel]

Dear Parkash,

please do just send plain text messages to mailing lists [1]. Since you
are using KMail this should  be easily configurable.

Am Samstag, den 31.12.2011, 10:55 +0100 schrieb Prakash Punnoor:
> flashrom kind of works on my system, but not with the factory images. If I 
> read it out with flashrom and write it back with flashrom (also to a different 
> chip) it works. The sizes of factory and dumped image are same but they are 
> somewhat binary different. Any idea? The motherboard is Abit A-S78H. As I am 
> playing around with coreboot - so far unsuccessfully - I want to know whether 
> flashrom is writing the generated image correctly... I can upload both images 
> somewhere if interested. This is flashrom output on my system:
>
> flashrom v0.9.4-r1395 on Linux 3.2.0-rc7+ (x86_64), built with libpci 3.1.7, 
> GCC 4.5.2, little endian
> flashrom is free software, get the source code at http://www.flashrom.org
>
> Calibrating delay loop... OK.
> Found chipset "AMD SB700/SB710/SB750/SB850". Enabling flash write... OK.
> This chipset supports the following protocols: LPC, FWH, SPI.
> Found Macronix flash chip "MX25L8005" (1024 kB, SPI) at physical address 
> 0xfff00000.
> No operations were specified.

Unfortunately this question seems not be listed in the FAQ. Most of the
time some areas differ because the MAC address and other configuration
data of the downloaded images differs [2]. I hope you mean the
downloaded image by factory/vendor image.

Thanks,

Paul

[1] http://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Mailing_list_netiquette
[2] http://flashrom.org/IRC/Bot#.21macaddr

[Prakash Punnoor]

On 31.12.2011 11:39, Paul Menzel wrote:
> Am Samstag, den 31.12.2011, 10:55 +0100 schrieb Prakash Punnoor:
> > flashrom kind of works on my system, but not with the factory images. If I 
> > read it out with flashrom and write it back with flashrom (also to a different 
> > chip) it works. The sizes of factory and dumped image are same but they are 
> > somewhat binary different. Any idea? The motherboard is Abit A-S78H. As I am 
> > playing around with coreboot - so far unsuccessfully - I want to know whether 
> > flashrom is writing the generated image correctly... I can upload both images 
> > somewhere if interested. This is flashrom output on my system:
> >
> > flashrom v0.9.4-r1395 on Linux 3.2.0-rc7+ (x86_64), built with libpci 3.1.7, 
> > GCC 4.5.2, little endian
> > flashrom is free software, get the source code at http://www.flashrom.org
> >
> > Calibrating delay loop... OK.
> > Found chipset "AMD SB700/SB710/SB750/SB850". Enabling flash write... OK.
> > This chipset supports the following protocols: LPC, FWH, SPI.
> > Found Macronix flash chip "MX25L8005" (1024 kB, SPI) at physical address 
> > 0xfff00000.
> > No operations were specified.
>
> Unfortunately this question seems not be listed in the FAQ. Most of the
> time some areas differ because the MAC address and other configuration
> data of the downloaded images differs [2]. I hope you mean the
> downloaded image by factory/vendor image.

To clarify:
- Image I got from vendor web page: Flashed with flashrom won't work
(machine doesn't POST). Flashed with awdflash works.
- Image flashed with awdflash, dumped from bios chip using flashrom and
writing back using flashrom (to an empty chip also) works (machine does
POST and I can boot my OS)
- I haven't tried writing flashrom dumped image using awdflash.
- If I write a dumped image using flashrom and later do a flashrom -v it
will complain about some difference. But flashrom -w verify pass was OK.

This makes my head scratch and I wonder whether flashrom is working 100%
correctly - especially using the generated coreboot rom.

Regards,

Prakash

[Prakash Punnoor]

On 31.12.2011 11:39, Paul Menzel wrote:
> Am Samstag, den 31.12.2011, 10:55 +0100 schrieb Prakash Punnoor:
> > flashrom kind of works on my system, but not with the factory images. If I 
> > read it out with flashrom and write it back with flashrom (also to a different 
> > chip) it works. The sizes of factory and dumped image are same but they are 
> > somewhat binary different. Any idea? The motherboard is Abit A-S78H. As I am 
> > playing around with coreboot - so far unsuccessfully - I want to know whether 
> > flashrom is writing the generated image correctly... I can upload both images 
> > somewhere if interested. This is flashrom output on my system:
> >
> > flashrom v0.9.4-r1395 on Linux 3.2.0-rc7+ (x86_64), built with libpci 3.1.7, 
> > GCC 4.5.2, little endian
> > flashrom is free software, get the source code at http://www.flashrom.org
> >
> > Calibrating delay loop... OK.
> > Found chipset "AMD SB700/SB710/SB750/SB850". Enabling flash write... OK.
> > This chipset supports the following protocols: LPC, FWH, SPI.
> > Found Macronix flash chip "MX25L8005" (1024 kB, SPI) at physical address 
> > 0xfff00000.
> > No operations were specified.
>
> Unfortunately this question seems not be listed in the FAQ. Most of the
> time some areas differ because the MAC address and other configuration
> data of the downloaded images differs [2]. I hope you mean the
> downloaded image by factory/vendor image.

To clarify:
- Image I got from vendor web page: Flashed with flashrom won't work
(machine doesn't POST). Flashed with awdflash works.
- Image flashed with awdflash, dumped from bios chip using flashrom and
writing back using flashrom (to an empty chip also) works (machine does
POST and I can boot my OS)
- I haven't tried writing flashrom dumped image using awdflash.
- If I write a dumped image using flashrom and later do a flashrom -v it
will complain about some difference. But flashrom -w verify pass was OK.

This makes my head scratch and I wonder whether flashrom is working 100%
correctly - especially using the generated coreboot rom.

Regards,

Prakash

[Idwer Vollering]

2011/12/31 Prakash Punnoor :
> On 31.12.2011 11:39, Paul Menzel wrote:
> > Am Samstag, den 31.12.2011, 10:55 +0100 schrieb Prakash Punnoor:
> > > flashrom kind of works on my system, but not with the factory images. If I
> > > read it out with flashrom and write it back with flashrom (also to a different
> > > chip) it works. The sizes of factory and dumped image are same but they are
> > > somewhat binary different. Any idea? The motherboard is Abit A-S78H. As I am
> > > playing around with coreboot - so far unsuccessfully - I want to know whether
> > > flashrom is writing the generated image correctly... I can upload both images
> > > somewhere if interested. This is flashrom output on my system:
> > >
> > > flashrom v0.9.4-r1395 on Linux 3.2.0-rc7+ (x86_64), built with libpci 3.1.7,
> > > GCC 4.5.2, little endian
> > > flashrom is free software, get the source code at http://www.flashrom.org
> > >
> > > Calibrating delay loop... OK.
> > > Found chipset "AMD SB700/SB710/SB750/SB850". Enabling flash write... OK.
> > > This chipset supports the following protocols: LPC, FWH, SPI.
> > > Found Macronix flash chip "MX25L8005" (1024 kB, SPI) at physical address
> > > 0xfff00000.
> > > No operations were specified.
> >
> > Unfortunately this question seems not be listed in the FAQ. Most of the
> > time some areas differ because the MAC address and other configuration
> > data of the downloaded images differs [2]. I hope you mean the
> > downloaded image by factory/vendor image.
>
> To clarify:
> Image I got from vendor web page: Flashed with flashrom won't work
>
> (machine doesn't POST). Flashed with awdflash works.

Is the bootblock in the downloaded image intact/present? You can use
bios_extract: http://cgit.freedesktop.org/~libv/bios_extract

What happens when you reset the CMOS/ESCD data after flashing with
flashrom? awdflash does that with the /cp parameter, see
http://www.plasma-online.de/textual/howto/flash_award.html
> Image flashed with awdflash, dumped from bios chip using flashrom and
>
> writing back using flashrom (to an empty chip also) works (machine does
> POST and I can boot my OS)
> I haven't tried writing flashrom dumped image using awdflash.
> If I write a dumped image using flashrom and later do a flashrom -v it
>
> will complain about some difference. But flashrom -w verify pass was OK.
>
> This makes my head scratch and I wonder whether flashrom is working 100%
> correctly - especially using the generated coreboot rom.

Do you have a POST card? You can get one off dealextreme..
http://www.dealextreme.com/p/pc-motherboard-repair-troubleshoot-boot-failure...
> Regards,
>
> Prakash
>
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