Re: [flashrom] FAILED: FR597AA-AKD m9360.pl (FR597AA#AKD)

[Michael Karcher]

Am Dienstag, den 14.02.2012, 11:39 +0100 schrieb Mariusz Cygan:
> > Verifying flash... VERIFY FAILED at 0x00011a00! Expected=0x05, Read=0xff,
> > failed byte count from 0x00000000-0x000fffff: 0x1f8
> > Your flash chip is in an unknown state.
> > Get help on IRC at irc.freenode.net (channel #flashrom) or
> > mail [e-mail] with FAILED: your board name in the subject line!
> :( and now I have to pay for the reprogramming of bone BIOS. Restored
> back however, and so does not work.

I don't completely understand what you mean by "restore back", if it
means "reboot", you are right, the chip likely needs to be reprogrammed
outside of that mainboard. In case of a desktop, the chip is likely
socketed (8-pin DIP) and easily replaceable. Also, as only a low amount
of bytes failed to get reprogrammed, chances are good that some flash
recovery mode (if supported by that BIOS) kicks in if you try to power
on the machine.

On the other hand, if "restore back" means restoring the old bios (a
backup you did with flashrom) and the thus the upgrade didn't work,
please give it a second try.

As I read the error message, writing the new image *nearly* worked, only
around 500 bytes mismatched, and at least the first byte mismatch is
likely explained by missing programming of a "page" of 256 bytes. Many
flash chips are quite picky on how the write instruction is issued, and
it might be that flashrom is slightly unreliable in getting it
completely right so the flash chip ignored the write instruction if
something looks fishy. I have to admit I don't know what exactly might
cause such a failure, though.

If that theory is indeed right, just retrying to write NT35.bin a second
time would likely have fixed the situation too, especially as flashrom
detects what areas really need to be reprogrammed and leaves the
correctly written areas alone.

If restoring the old BIOS worked as I guessed in the three steps above,
I would encourage you to try writing the new image again, please run
flashrom in verbose mode (add -V) and send the output to the mailing
list. If writing fails again, please retry with the same image, and
attach the log of the write process to the mail, too.

Regards,
  Michael Karcher