Hi,
I flashed my bios with flashrom tonight and got the scary warning message saying "erase failed" and "do not reboot".
I haven't rebooted.
As far as I can tell from using flashrom itself, everything is actually fine. The erase appears to have failed at physical address 0, which I would guess means that nothing actually happened.
I had taken a dump of the original bios before starting, and "flashrom -v" now verifies that it is identical.
Furthermore, a new dump of the bios matches the original dump from before I tried to write the bios.
My board is an MSI K8N Neo4 Platinum.
Output from my dump attempt and subsequent messing around follows.
Do I have your blessing to reboot my machine?
--Fraser
======================================================================
fraser@ged:/tmp/7125v1D$ sudo flashrom flashrom v0.9.1-r706 No coreboot table found. Found chipset "NVIDIA CK804", enabling flash write... OK. This chipset supports the following protocols: Non-SPI. Calibrating delay loop... OK. Found chip "PMC Pm49FL004" (512 KB, LPC,FWH) at physical address 0xfff80000. No operations were specified.
fraser@ged:/tmp/7125v1D$ sudo flashrom -w W7125NMS.1D0 flashrom v0.9.1-r706 No coreboot table found. Found chipset "NVIDIA CK804", enabling flash write... OK. This chipset supports the following protocols: Non-SPI. Calibrating delay loop... OK. Found chip "PMC Pm49FL004" (512 KB, LPC,FWH) at physical address 0xfff80000. Flash image seems to be a legacy BIOS. Disabling checks. Writing flash chip... Programming page: ERASE FAILED at 0x00000000! Expected=0xff, Read=0x49, failed byte count from 0x00000000-0x0000ffff: 0x599 ERASE FAILED! ERASE FAILED! FAILED! Your flash chip is in an unknown state. Get help on IRC at irc.freenode.net channel #flashrom or mail flashrom@flashrom.org ------------------------------------------------------------ DO NOT REBOOT OR POWEROFF!
fraser@ged:/tmp/7125v1D$ sudo flashrom -w original.bios flashrom v0.9.1-r706 No coreboot table found. Found chipset "NVIDIA CK804", enabling flash write... OK. This chipset supports the following protocols: Non-SPI. Calibrating delay loop... OK. Found chip "PMC Pm49FL004" (512 KB, LPC,FWH) at physical address 0xfff80000. Flash image seems to be a legacy BIOS. Disabling checks. Writing flash chip... Programming page: ERASE FAILED at 0x00000000! Expected=0xff, Read=0x49, failed byte count from 0x00000000-0x0000ffff: 0x599 ERASE FAILED! ERASE FAILED! FAILED! Your flash chip is in an unknown state. Get help on IRC at irc.freenode.net channel #flashrom or mail flashrom@flashrom.org ------------------------------------------------------------ DO NOT REBOOT OR POWEROFF!
fraser@ged:/tmp/7125v1D$ sudo flashrom -r bios flashrom v0.9.1-r706 No coreboot table found. Found chipset "NVIDIA CK804", enabling flash write... OK. This chipset supports the following protocols: Non-SPI. Calibrating delay loop... OK. Found chip "PMC Pm49FL004" (512 KB, LPC,FWH) at physical address 0xfff80000. Reading flash... done.
fraser@ged:/tmp/7125v1D$ md5sum bios 8382ac62ffcfe57a86514dad936deb82 bios
fraser@ged:/tmp/7125v1D$ md5sum original.bios 8382ac62ffcfe57a86514dad936deb82 original.bios
fraser@ged:/tmp/7125v1D$ sudo flashrom -v original.bios flashrom v0.9.1-r706 No coreboot table found. Found chipset "NVIDIA CK804", enabling flash write... OK. This chipset supports the following protocols: Non-SPI. Calibrating delay loop... OK. Found chip "PMC Pm49FL004" (512 KB, LPC,FWH) at physical address 0xfff80000. Flash image seems to be a legacy BIOS. Disabling checks. Verifying flash... VERIFIED.
Hi Fraser,
On 10.11.2009 05:45, Fraser Hanson wrote:
I flashed my bios with flashrom tonight and got the scary warning message saying "erase failed" and "do not reboot".
I haven't rebooted.
As far as I can tell from using flashrom itself, everything is actually fine.
We're working on detecting the special case of an erase operation which didn't do anything so that we can write a less scary error message.
The erase appears to have failed at physical address 0, which I would guess means that nothing actually happened.
Sometimes erase still happens even if it fails at address 0.
I had taken a dump of the original bios before starting, and "flashrom -v" now verifies that it is identical.
Furthermore, a new dump of the bios matches the original dump from before I tried to write the bios.
Looks good.
My board is an MSI K8N Neo4 Platinum.
Output from my dump attempt and subsequent messing around follows.
Do I have your blessing to reboot my machine?
Yes, you do.
We'd like to add support for writing on your board. We already support the MSI K8N Neo3, so there's a good chance your board can be supported easily.
Could you please download latest flashrom from svn, then run (as root) lspci -nnvvvxxx superiotool -dV flashrom -V and attach the output to your reply mail (reply to all)?
Besides that, we need to know if this is an Award/AMI/Phoenix BIOS and where a BIOS update can be downloaded (direct link would be appreciated, please don't attach the BIOS image).
Regards, Carl-Daniel
Rebooted, no problems. Thanks for the quick reply.
We'd like to add support for writing on your board. We already support the MSI K8N Neo3, so there's a good chance your board can be supported easily.
I'd be happy to help test your code change to support this board.
Could you please download latest flashrom from svn, then run (as root) lspci -nnvvvxxx superiotool -dV flashrom -V and attach the output to your reply mail (reply to all)?
OK, all 3 are attached. Flashrom output is from the latest svn, version number is in the output of course.
Besides that, we need to know if this is an Award/AMI/Phoenix BIOS and where a BIOS update can be downloaded (direct link would be appreciated, please don't attach the BIOS image).
The board is a K8N Neo4 Platinum (PCB 1.0)
The information page is here: http://www.msi.com/index.php?func=proddesc&maincat_no=1&prod_no=165#
The download page showing all available BIOS updates for this board is here: http://www.msi.com/index.php?func=downloaddetail&type=bios&maincat_n...
The stock BIOS is from Phoenix, version number is 6.00 PG. That information is based on the first few lines of hexdump output from the stock BIOS:
00000000 49 4d 44 24 2a 00 5f 00 42 00 00 14 00 00 01 02 |IMD$*._.B.......| 00000010 00 e0 03 07 90 9e cb 7f 00 00 00 00 33 01 50 68 |............3.Ph| 00000020 6f 65 6e 69 78 20 54 65 63 68 6e 6f 6c 6f 67 69 |oenix Technologi| 00000030 65 73 2c 20 4c 54 44 00 36 2e 30 30 20 50 47 00 |es, LTD.6.00 PG.| 00000040 30 36 2f 32 33 2f 32 30 30 35 00 00 4a 00 01 19 |06/23/2005..J...| 00000050 01 00 01 02 03 04 ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff |................| 00000060 ff ff ff ff ff ff 06 4d 49 43 52 4f 2d 53 54 41 |.......MICRO-STA| 00000070 52 20 49 4e 54 45 52 4e 41 54 49 4f 4e 41 4c 20 |R INTERNATIONAL | 00000080 43 4f 2e 2c 20 4c 54 44 00 4d 53 2d 37 31 32 35 |CO., LTD.MS-7125| 00000090 00 31 2e 30 00 20 00 00 39 00 02 08 02 00 01 02 |.1.0. ..9.......| 000000a0 03 04 4d 49 43 52 4f 2d 53 54 41 52 20 49 4e 54 |..MICRO-STAR INT| 000000b0 45 52 4e 41 54 49 4f 4e 41 4c 20 43 4f 2e 2c 20 |ERNATIONAL CO., | 000000c0 4c 54 44 00 4d 53 2d 37 31 32 35 00 31 2e 30 00 |LTD.MS-7125.1.0.| 000000d0 20 00 00 1a 00 03 11 03 00 01 03 02 03 04 02 02 | ...............| 000000e0 02 02 00 00 00 00 20 00 20 00 20 00 20 00 00 68 |...... . . . ..h| 000000f0 00 04 23 04 00 01 03 83 02 b1 0f 02 00 ff fb 8b |..#.............| 00000100 17 03 8d c9 00 b8 0b da 07 41 12 0b 00 0d 00 ff |.........A......| 00000110 ff 04 05 06 53 6f 63 6b 65 74 20 39 33 39 00 41 |....Socket 939.A| 00000120 4d 44 00 41 4d 44 20 41 74 68 6c 6f 6e 28 74 6d |MD.AMD Athlon(tm| 00000130 29 20 36 34 20 58 32 20 44 75 61 6c 20 43 6f 72 |) 64 X2 Dual Cor| 00000140 65 20 50 72 6f 63 65 73 73 6f 72 20 33 38 30 30 |e Processor 3800| 00000150 2b 00 20 00 20 00 20 00 00 68 00 04 23 05 00 01 |+. . . ..h..#...|
The updates on the BIOS update page seem to be from Award though, not Phoenix. I found this string in the v1.D BIOS from that page: Award BootBlock BIOS v1.0..Copyright (c) 2000, Award Software, Inc.
--Fraser
On Mon, Nov 09, 2009 at 08:45:45PM -0800, Fraser Hanson wrote:
Hi,
I flashed my bios with flashrom tonight and got the scary warning message saying "erase failed" and "do not reboot".
I haven't rebooted.
As far as I can tell from using flashrom itself, everything is actually fine. The erase appears to have failed at physical address 0, which I would guess means that nothing actually happened.
I had taken a dump of the original bios before starting, and "flashrom -v" now verifies that it is identical.
Furthermore, a new dump of the bios matches the original dump from before I tried to write the bios.
My board is an MSI K8N Neo4 Platinum.
Output from my dump attempt and subsequent messing around follows.
Do I have your blessing to reboot my machine?
--Fraser
Give the attached patch a whirl.
Luc Verhaegen.
On Mon, Nov 09, 2009 at 08:45:45PM -0800, Fraser Hanson wrote:
Hi,
I flashed my bios with flashrom tonight and got the scary warning message saying "erase failed" and "do not reboot".
I haven't rebooted.
As far as I can tell from using flashrom itself, everything is actually fine. The erase appears to have failed at physical address 0, which I would guess means that nothing actually happened.
I had taken a dump of the original bios before starting, and "flashrom -v" now verifies that it is identical.
Furthermore, a new dump of the bios matches the original dump from before I tried to write the bios.
My board is an MSI K8N Neo4 Platinum.
Output from my dump attempt and subsequent messing around follows.
Do I have your blessing to reboot my machine?
--Fraser
-> r816.
Luc Verhaegen.
-
Carl-Daniel Hailfinger -
Fraser Hanson -
Luc Verhaegen