[Lenovo G505S] KB9012 EC controller patches for the latest flashrom

[Mike Banon]

Hi Nico and Paul, and Lenovo G505S owners/developers,

I have ported the patches by Paul Kocialkowski to the latest flashrom
sources of master branch (earlier there were incompatibilities) --
making it possible to flash KB9012 EC controller [found in Lenovo
G505S AMD coreboot-supported laptop (no AMD PSP backdoor!)] with the
latest flashrom. Probed/read/erased/flashed/verified a few times,
looks like its working perfectly :)

Also, thanks to [v4,5/6] patch, now KB9012 is "hidden" and will never
be probed for, unless explicitly specified by its chip name: -c
"KB9012 (EDI)" or --chip "KB9012 (EDI)" . That should help to avoid
the problems with other chips

[v4,5/6] Add the hidden-from-probing chips category and make KB9012 hidden

There are some chips like ENE KB9012, probing for which
could cause the other chips to misbehave. Therefore, such chips
should be "hidden" - not probed for unless the user wants

This commit introduces a new field to the "flashchip" structure:

int hidden;

Now it is possible to "hide" any chip by adding this line

.hidden        = 1,

to the "struct flashchip flashchips[]" structure of a chip, like

.write         = edi_chip_write,
 .read          = edi_chip_read,
 .voltage       = {2700, 3600},
 .hidden        = 1,
 },

flashrom will probe for a chip only if one of these conditions is true:
1) no chip has been specified AND this chip is not "hidden"
2) this chip has been specified by -c | --chip <chipname>

All the patches could be reviewed by these links below, and it is
possible to merge them sequentially: [v4,1/6] --> [v4,2/6] -->
[v4,3/6] --> [v4,4/6] --> [v4,5/6] --> [v4,6/6]

https://review.coreboot.org/#/c/flashrom/+/23258 [v4,1/6] Add support
for selecting the erased bit value with a flag
https://review.coreboot.org/#/c/flashrom/+/23259 [v4,2/6] ENE Embedded
Debug Interface EDI and ENE KB9012 EC flashing support
https://review.coreboot.org/#/c/flashrom/+/23260 [v4,3/6] ENE EDI -
add dummy read to ensure proper detection of ENE chips
https://review.coreboot.org/#/c/flashrom/+/23261 [v4,4/6] ENE EDI -
print debug info like others while probing for ENE chips
https://review.coreboot.org/#/c/flashrom/+/23262 [v4,5/6] Add the
hidden-from-probing chips category and make KB9012 hidden
https://review.coreboot.org/#/c/flashrom/+/23263 [v4,6/6] Add support
for reading the current flash contents from a file

Cheers,
Mike

On Wed, Jan 3, 2018 at 5:18 PM, Paul Kocialkowski  wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Le mercredi 03 janvier 2018 à 15:34 +0300, Ivan Ivanov a écrit :
> > Please tell - are there any real reasons why the Paul Kocialkowski's
> > KB9012 support patches
> > still cannot be merged? It is very discouraging - after 2 years of
> > waiting to not see them at 1.0
> > Is there any way to get these patches merged, and maybe re-tag the
> > flashrom 1.0 release ?
>
> We have been discussing about the future of these patches and they
> cannot be accepted as-is today. Mostly, Nico was worried that issuing
> SPI commands for the EDI protocol might cause some chips to misbehave if
> these commands have another signification. I think this is a valid
> concern.
>
> We agreed that one way to solve this would be to create groups for
> probing, e.g. one with jedec-compliant chips (default) and one for ene
> chips, so that only one group is probbed at the same time.
>
> I did not have the time to implement this idea yet, so it will block
> kb9012 inclusion for now. If you'd like to go ahead and implement this
> feature, I'd be happy to review your patches!
>
> Cheers,
>
> Paul
> > 2017-12-30 23:49 GMT+03:00 Ivan Ivanov :
> > > Hi Nico, please could you also merge the KB9012 patches by Paul
> > > Kocialkowski :
> > >
> > > https://patchwork.coreboot.org/patch/4412/
> > > https://patchwork.coreboot.org/patch/4413/
> > > https://patchwork.coreboot.org/patch/4414/
> > >
> > > It is ridiculous how these patches are still not merged , after
> > > almost
> > > 2 years... :P
> > > These patches are adding the support for KB9012 reading / writing,
> > > the only open source flashing solution for these embedded
> > > controllers
> > >
> > > Merging these patches could accelerate the development of Origami EC
> > > libre firmware,
> > > please do it
> > >
> > > Best regards,
> > > Ivan Ivanov
>
> Website: https://www.paulk.fr/
> Coding blog: https://code.paulk.fr/
> Git repositories: https://git.paulk.fr/ https://git.code.paulk.fr/
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