successfully PROBE READ ERASE WRITE on "Acer Aspire 1520" Laptop

[Paweł Stawicki]

Hi All,
I have successfully  PROBE READ  WRITE  and   ERASE (??)
on my laptop "acer aspire 1520"

The only bug that I get is an error when
I'm ERASEing
(but  when I read the erased flash I get only 0xFF bytes
and I can write again)

root@stawel-laptop:~/bios/inny# flashrom -E
Calibrating delay loop... OK.
No coreboot table found.
Found chipset "VIA VT8235", enabling flash write... OK.
Found chip "Winbond W39V040A" (512 KB) at physical address 0xfff80000.
===
This flash part has status UNTESTED for operations: PROBE READ ERASE WRITE
Please email a report to [e-mail] if any of the above
operations
work correctly for you with this flash part. Please include the full output
from the program, including chipset found. Thank you for your help!
===
Erasing flash chip... FAILED!
ERROR at 0x00080000: Expected=0xff, Read=0x00
root@stawel-laptop:~/bios/inny#

root@stawel-laptop:~# flashrom -R
flashrom r3844
root@stawel-laptop:~#

Best Regards,
Paweł Stawicki

successfully PROBE READ ERASE WRITE on "Acer Aspire 1520" Laptop

[Carl-Daniel Hailfinger]

Hi Paweł,

thanks for your report. We generally recommend not to use flashrom on
laptops due to possible interactions with the embedded controllers on
laptops. It seems the embedded controller on your laptop doesn't cause
any problems which is good.
You're using a really old flashrom version which has problems with erase
on some Winbond W39* chips. This is fixed in flashrom 0.9.1 and later
versions.

On 05.03.2010 19:13, Paweł Stawicki wrote:
> I have successfully  PROBE READ  WRITE  and   ERASE (??)
> on my laptop "acer aspire 1520"
>
> The only bug that I get is an error when
> I'm ERASEing
> (but  when I read the erased flash I get only 0xFF bytes
> and I can write again)
>
> root@stawel-laptop:~/bios/inny# flashrom -E
> Calibrating delay loop... OK.
> No coreboot table found.
> Found chipset "VIA VT8235", enabling flash write... OK.
> Found chip "Winbond W39V040A" (512 KB) at physical address 0xfff80000.
> Erasing flash chip... FAILED!
> ERROR at 0x00080000: Expected=0xff, Read=0x00
> root@stawel-laptop:~/bios/inny#

Could you please install a newer version of flashrom (at least 0.9.1,
preferably current svn) and send in the output of
flashrom -V
lspci -nnvvvxxx
superiotool -deV

If you don't have superiotool installed, don't worry, it's not that
important.

Regards,
Carl-Daniel

[Paweł Stawicki]

Hi Carl-Daniel

thanks for your report. We generally recommend not to use flashrom on
> laptops due to possible interactions with the embedded controllers on
> laptops.

hehe :-)
Sometimes it is better to not know everything.

ok I'm attaching the outputs You asked for.
The svn version works with no errors.

Best Regards,
Paweł Stawicki

successfully PROBE READ ERASE WRITE on "Acer Aspire 1520" Laptop

[Carl-Daniel Hailfinger]

Hi Paweł,

On 06.03.2010 12:38, Paweł Stawicki wrote:
> ok I'm attaching the outputs You asked for.
> The svn version works with no errors.

Thanks for the information and thanks for testing.
> flashrom v0.9.1-r921
> No coreboot table found.
> DMI string system-manufacturer: "Acer"
> DMI string system-product-name: "Aspire 1520"
> DMI string system-version: "-1             "
> DMI string baseboard-manufacturer: "Acer"
> DMI string baseboard-product-name: "Aspire 1520"
> DMI string baseboard-version: "Rev.A          "
> DMI string chassis-type: "Other"

Oh wow. Chassis-type should be "Laptop", not "Other". That's totally
unexpected.

Could you please send the full output from "dmidecode" to me privately
so that I can try to find some other laptop designator? You can also
send the dmidecode output to the list, but it may contain serial numbers
or other identifying information. Thank you.

Regards,
Carl-Daniel