flashrom on an Alpha Workstation 433au

Hi,

as the subject suggests I have run flashrom on a DEC Alpha Digital
Personal Workstation [1], model 433au. flashrom itself segfaults but
superiotool finds a SuperIO at least.

Most DEC Alpha workstations are flashed using a proprietary flash
utility which is run from the the SRM console [2]. There are several
manuals on the net from DEC and Compaq which describe how to update
the firmware using the original utilities, for example [3].

I have no idea so far how to enable/disable writing to the flash rom
chips but I think it should not require any more magic than on x86 systems
;). Especially, because many of the Alpha systems are actually using
Intel chipsets. Usually those Alpha machines have a jumper onboard
which enables/disables flash write so there probably isn't the need
for a specific board enable at all. Probably it's just a matter of
finding the proper location of the address space of the flash chip in
memory.

I'm attaching the debug logs for superiotool -dV, lspci -nnvvvxxx and
flashrom -V.

Adrian

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Personal_Workstation
[2] http://www.compaq.com/alphaserver/download/srm_reference.pdf
[3] ftp://15.200.2.21/ftp1/pub/alphaserver/firmware/retired_platforms/workstations/ASTN600/alpha500_600_V72_fw_relnote.pdf

[Joseph Smith]

On 04/02/2010 01:51 PM, [e-mail] wrote:
> Hi,
>
> as the subject suggests I have run flashrom on a DEC Alpha Digital
> Personal Workstation [1], model 433au. flashrom itself segfaults but
> superiotool finds a SuperIO at least.
>
> Most DEC Alpha workstations are flashed using a proprietary flash
> utility which is run from the the SRM console [2]. There are several
> manuals on the net from DEC and Compaq which describe how to update
> the firmware using the original utilities, for example [3].
>
> I have no idea so far how to enable/disable writing to the flash rom
> chips but I think it should not require any more magic than on x86 systems
> ;). Especially, because many of the Alpha systems are actually using
> Intel chipsets. Usually those Alpha machines have a jumper onboard
> which enables/disables flash write so there probably isn't the need
> for a specific board enable at all. Probably it's just a matter of
> finding the proper location of the address space of the flash chip in
> memory.

Hello,
I am very familiar with the DEC Alpha's, and the SRM console. It was a 
hobby of mine for a while, being from New Hampshire (where they were 
made) and all. First Processor to hit 1GHz in the late 80's. For sure 
the first 64bit machine I owned (not from the 80's though). Anyways, I 
didn't do much firmware updating on them, but I would be glad to answer 
any general Alpha questions you have.