Regarding the flashing equipment (test clip, programmer) - you could refer to http://dangerousprototypes.com/docs/Flashing_a_BIOS_chip_with_Bus_Pirate . There's a SOIC8 test clip with 2.54mm bent pins, so that you can use any 1P wires of any length and material (preferably copper), and CH341A programmer with a green PCB.
You'd need to re-check this, but it seems to me that flashrom doesn't support PMC Pm49FL004T : although not sure, I could only find messages like this one: https://mail.coreboot.org/pipermail/flashrom/2014-May/012437.html . The question is, could this chip be replaced with another alternative chip that's supported by flashrom? But, if you'll still need to read the existing firmware from Pm49FL004T , then you may have to get a proprietary programmer (that'll be really overpriced in comparison to $2 CH341A).
ср, 10 нояб. 2021 г. в 21:00, Betibeteka Beranduetxea artxitatel@gmail.com:
Hi
Thank you very much for the heads-up about flashrom.
As said, motherboard is OK with flashrom, but I'm unable to find my BIOS chip on the supported hardware list.
These are the numbers on the chip: PMC. 0639 Pm49FL004T-33JCE
As you look much more fluent than me on this matter, could you give any pointer to that chip or an equivalent one?
I looked for the PLCC puller on aliexpress and I have seen some cheap ones, but, would you mind to give me any pointer, should you have any preferences. Same for the programmer...
With that equipement, I could do many tests without fear to brik the machine....
History is, since 2012 I'm using an allmost identical machine to run LinuxCNC. I have been unable to find any other with a so low jitter < 20 usec (excellent for stepper pulse generation). Even current systems give me more jitter. Then this second machine came to me. Only differences are in the case: hard disk placement and frontal USB ports vs USB multicard reader. OS is exactly the same, only BIOS version differs. However, jitter in this second machine is 3-4x worse. That's the reason why I think a BIOS update is in order.
Again, thank you very much
Kind regards from Spain
Roman
Hi,
This is what I'm getting:
https://aliexpress.com/item/1005001614869060.html (adapter) https://aliexpress.com/item/32725360255.html (burner + clamp,dirty cheap, I wanted the clamp, couldn't resist it) https://es.aliexpress.com/item/1005002412971490.html (puller)
About the chip: It seems to me that it could be this (please see attachment) However i looked for it on the web and it seems to be a 4 MB chip, while flashrom-listed one would be 512 KB? I hope it will be right...
If I'm getting it right, FreeDOS 1.3RC4 includes flashrom? It would be nice to put anything BIOS-related on a salvaged laptop disk. Perhaps with a DOS boot partition. Hell, last time I flashed a BIOS was almost a decade ago, and I really never played with DOS much more than just doing a win98 boot floppy. But, it could be interesting to do and to have a little hard disk ready for flashing any BIOS I could play wildly with at least 2-3 machines.
Does FreeDOS flashrom work fine? Or are there any known bugs?
Best wishes
El mié, 17 nov 2021 a las 16:19, Ivan Ivanov (qmastery16@gmail.com) escribió:
Regarding the flashing equipment (test clip, programmer) - you could refer to http://dangerousprototypes.com/docs/Flashing_a_BIOS_chip_with_Bus_Pirate . There's a SOIC8 test clip with 2.54mm bent pins, so that you can use any 1P wires of any length and material (preferably copper), and CH341A programmer with a green PCB.
You'd need to re-check this, but it seems to me that flashrom doesn't support PMC Pm49FL004T : although not sure, I could only find messages like this one: https://mail.coreboot.org/pipermail/flashrom/2014-May/012437.html . The question is, could this chip be replaced with another alternative chip that's supported by flashrom? But, if you'll still need to read the existing firmware from Pm49FL004T , then you may have to get a proprietary programmer (that'll be really overpriced in comparison to $2 CH341A).
ср, 10 нояб. 2021 г. в 21:00, Betibeteka Beranduetxea < artxitatel@gmail.com>:
Hi
Thank you very much for the heads-up about flashrom.
As said, motherboard is OK with flashrom, but I'm unable to find my BIOS
chip on the supported hardware list.
These are the numbers on the chip: PMC. 0639 Pm49FL004T-33JCE
As you look much more fluent than me on this matter, could you give any
pointer to that chip or an equivalent one?
I looked for the PLCC puller on aliexpress and I have seen some cheap
ones, but, would you mind to give me any pointer, should you have any preferences. Same for the programmer...
With that equipement, I could do many tests without fear to brik the
machine....
History is, since 2012 I'm using an allmost identical machine to run
LinuxCNC. I have been unable to find any other with a so low jitter < 20 usec (excellent for stepper pulse generation). Even current systems give me more jitter. Then this second machine came to me. Only differences are in the case: hard disk placement and frontal USB ports vs USB multicard reader. OS is exactly the same, only BIOS version differs. However, jitter in this second machine is 3-4x worse. That's the reason why I think a BIOS update is in order.
Again, thank you very much
Kind regards from Spain
Roman
Ooops... here's the attachment
El mié, 17 nov 2021 a las 23:51, Betibeteka Beranduetxea (< artxitatel@gmail.com>) escribió:
Hi,
This is what I'm getting:
https://aliexpress.com/item/1005001614869060.html (adapter) https://aliexpress.com/item/32725360255.html (burner + clamp,dirty cheap, I wanted the clamp, couldn't resist it) https://es.aliexpress.com/item/1005002412971490.html (puller)
About the chip: It seems to me that it could be this (please see attachment) However i looked for it on the web and it seems to be a 4 MB chip, while flashrom-listed one would be 512 KB? I hope it will be right...
If I'm getting it right, FreeDOS 1.3RC4 includes flashrom? It would be nice to put anything BIOS-related on a salvaged laptop disk. Perhaps with a DOS boot partition. Hell, last time I flashed a BIOS was almost a decade ago, and I really never played with DOS much more than just doing a win98 boot floppy. But, it could be interesting to do and to have a little hard disk ready for flashing any BIOS I could play wildly with at least 2-3 machines.
Does FreeDOS flashrom work fine? Or are there any known bugs?
Best wishes
El mié, 17 nov 2021 a las 16:19, Ivan Ivanov (qmastery16@gmail.com) escribió:
Regarding the flashing equipment (test clip, programmer) - you could refer to http://dangerousprototypes.com/docs/Flashing_a_BIOS_chip_with_Bus_Pirate . There's a SOIC8 test clip with 2.54mm bent pins, so that you can use any 1P wires of any length and material (preferably copper), and CH341A programmer with a green PCB.
You'd need to re-check this, but it seems to me that flashrom doesn't support PMC Pm49FL004T : although not sure, I could only find messages like this one: https://mail.coreboot.org/pipermail/flashrom/2014-May/012437.html . The question is, could this chip be replaced with another alternative chip that's supported by flashrom? But, if you'll still need to read the existing firmware from Pm49FL004T , then you may have to get a proprietary programmer (that'll be really overpriced in comparison to $2 CH341A).
ср, 10 нояб. 2021 г. в 21:00, Betibeteka Beranduetxea < artxitatel@gmail.com>:
Hi
Thank you very much for the heads-up about flashrom.
As said, motherboard is OK with flashrom, but I'm unable to find my
BIOS chip on the supported hardware list.
These are the numbers on the chip: PMC. 0639 Pm49FL004T-33JCE
As you look much more fluent than me on this matter, could you give any
pointer to that chip or an equivalent one?
I looked for the PLCC puller on aliexpress and I have seen some cheap
ones, but, would you mind to give me any pointer, should you have any preferences. Same for the programmer...
With that equipement, I could do many tests without fear to brik the
machine....
History is, since 2012 I'm using an allmost identical machine to run
LinuxCNC. I have been unable to find any other with a so low jitter < 20 usec (excellent for stepper pulse generation). Even current systems give me more jitter. Then this second machine came to me. Only differences are in the case: hard disk placement and frontal USB ports vs USB multicard reader. OS is exactly the same, only BIOS version differs. However, jitter in this second machine is 3-4x worse. That's the reason why I think a BIOS update is in order.
Again, thank you very much
Kind regards from Spain
Roman
Dear friend, please make sure that you're getting a CH341A programmer ( "burner" ) with a green PCB. That's because some ch341a programmers with a black PCB - just like your link! - have a problem: they are giving 5V instead of 3.3V which could damage some chips.
About the chip: It seems to me that it could be this (please see attachment) However i looked for it on the web and it seems to be a 4 MB chip, while flashrom-listed one would be 512 KB? I hope it will be right...
Yes, from the attachment it seems your chip is really supported (and the messages about "unsupported" were old - sorry for that). As for the size of a chip: it is 4 Mbit = 4 Megabit = 512 KB, so the size is correct there.
If I'm getting it right, FreeDOS 1.3RC4 includes flashrom?
I don't know if FreeDOS includes flashrom out-of-the-box, but yes there's a flashrom build for freedos as well as for windows.
Does FreeDOS flashrom work fine? Or are there any known bugs?
Compared to a flashrom for Linux, the other platforms are less popular and therefore are more likely to have the platform-only bugs that aren't experienced by the majority of people. So, for a flawless flashrom experience I still recommend a Linux LiveCD or just a full Linux where you can easily install a flashrom. modern Linux is really user-friendly and there's no good reason to avoid it ;-)
чт, 18 нояб. 2021 г. в 01:56, Betibeteka Beranduetxea artxitatel@gmail.com:
Ooops... here's the attachment
El mié, 17 nov 2021 a las 23:51, Betibeteka Beranduetxea (artxitatel@gmail.com) escribió:
Hi,
This is what I'm getting:
https://aliexpress.com/item/1005001614869060.html (adapter) https://aliexpress.com/item/32725360255.html (burner + clamp,dirty cheap, I wanted the clamp, couldn't resist it) https://es.aliexpress.com/item/1005002412971490.html (puller)
About the chip: It seems to me that it could be this (please see attachment) However i looked for it on the web and it seems to be a 4 MB chip, while flashrom-listed one would be 512 KB? I hope it will be right...
If I'm getting it right, FreeDOS 1.3RC4 includes flashrom? It would be nice to put anything BIOS-related on a salvaged laptop disk. Perhaps with a DOS boot partition. Hell, last time I flashed a BIOS was almost a decade ago, and I really never played with DOS much more than just doing a win98 boot floppy. But, it could be interesting to do and to have a little hard disk ready for flashing any BIOS I could play wildly with at least 2-3 machines.
Does FreeDOS flashrom work fine? Or are there any known bugs?
Best wishes
El mié, 17 nov 2021 a las 16:19, Ivan Ivanov (qmastery16@gmail.com) escribió:
Regarding the flashing equipment (test clip, programmer) - you could refer to http://dangerousprototypes.com/docs/Flashing_a_BIOS_chip_with_Bus_Pirate . There's a SOIC8 test clip with 2.54mm bent pins, so that you can use any 1P wires of any length and material (preferably copper), and CH341A programmer with a green PCB.
You'd need to re-check this, but it seems to me that flashrom doesn't support PMC Pm49FL004T : although not sure, I could only find messages like this one: https://mail.coreboot.org/pipermail/flashrom/2014-May/012437.html . The question is, could this chip be replaced with another alternative chip that's supported by flashrom? But, if you'll still need to read the existing firmware from Pm49FL004T , then you may have to get a proprietary programmer (that'll be really overpriced in comparison to $2 CH341A).
ср, 10 нояб. 2021 г. в 21:00, Betibeteka Beranduetxea artxitatel@gmail.com:
Hi
Thank you very much for the heads-up about flashrom.
As said, motherboard is OK with flashrom, but I'm unable to find my BIOS chip on the supported hardware list.
These are the numbers on the chip: PMC. 0639 Pm49FL004T-33JCE
As you look much more fluent than me on this matter, could you give any pointer to that chip or an equivalent one?
I looked for the PLCC puller on aliexpress and I have seen some cheap ones, but, would you mind to give me any pointer, should you have any preferences. Same for the programmer...
With that equipement, I could do many tests without fear to brik the machine....
History is, since 2012 I'm using an allmost identical machine to run LinuxCNC. I have been unable to find any other with a so low jitter < 20 usec (excellent for stepper pulse generation). Even current systems give me more jitter. Then this second machine came to me. Only differences are in the case: hard disk placement and frontal USB ports vs USB multicard reader. OS is exactly the same, only BIOS version differs. However, jitter in this second machine is 3-4x worse. That's the reason why I think a BIOS update is in order.
Again, thank you very much
Kind regards from Spain
Roman
Hi,
On 17.11.21 23:51, Betibeteka Beranduetxea wrote:
This is what I'm getting:> > https://aliexpress.com/item/1005001614869060.html (adapter)>
https://aliexpress.com/item/32725360255.html (burner + clamp,dirty cheap, I> wanted the clamp, couldn't resist it) this is an I2C/SPI programmer (says 24 25 series in the description) your flash chip is an LPC/FWH one (49 series). So this won't work. LPC programmers are not cheap (and that will likely not change as they are rarely used these days).
However, I wonder if you need a programmer at all. As long as both machines are still booting, you should be able to read/write the BIOS flash with flashrom's "internal" programmer option. If in doubt, you can send us a verbose log (or paste it on paste.flashrom.org) taken with `flashrom -p internal -o logfile.txt`. Only if something goes wrong and one of the machines isn't booting anymore, you should need a separate programmer.
If you need a programmer, I'm not sure if I can give a good recom- mendation. There is the teensy option [1], but it seems pretty much DIY. What many people do (and succeed) is hot-plugging these flash chips, but it comes with some risk of course. You can boot a PC normally, then, while it's running, swap flash chips and then read/write the second chip like you would during a BIOS update.
https://es.aliexpress.com/item/1005002412971490.html (puller)
About the chip: It seems to me that it could be this (please see attachment) However i looked for it on the web and it seems to be a 4 MB chip, while flashrom-listed one would be 512 KB? I hope it will be right...
Seems correct. The Pm49FL004 datasheet lists the T variant (Pm49FL004T) so this should be compatible.
Nico
[1] https://www.flashrom.org/Teensy_3.1_SPI_%2B_LPC/FWH_Flasher
El sáb, 27 nov 2021 a las 12:47, Nico Huber (nico.h@gmx.de) escribió:
Hi,
On 17.11.21 23:51, Betibeteka Beranduetxea wrote:
This is what I'm getting:> >
https://aliexpress.com/item/1005001614869060.html (adapter)> https://aliexpress.com/item/32725360255.html (burner + clamp,dirty cheap, I> wanted the clamp, couldn't resist it) this is an I2C/SPI programmer (says 24 25 series in the description) your flash chip is an LPC/FWH one (49 series). So this won't work. LPC programmers are not cheap (and that will likely not change as they are rarely used these days).
However, I wonder if you need a programmer at all. As long as both
machines are still booting, you should be able to read/write the BIOS flash with flashrom's "internal" programmer option. If in doubt, you can send us a verbose log (or paste it on paste.flashrom.org) taken with `flashrom -p internal -o logfile.txt`. Only if something goes wrong and one of the machines isn't booting anymore, you should need a separate programmer.
Shit happens. However I did purchase that programmed BIOS chip, so I could always unbrick the machine.
If you need a programmer, I'm not sure if I can give a good recom-
mendation. There is the teensy option [1], but it seems pretty much DIY. What many people do (and succeed) is hot-plugging these flash chips, but it comes with some risk of course. You can boot a PC normally, then, while it's running, swap flash chips and then read/write the second chip like you would during a BIOS update.
[1] https://www.flashrom.org/Teensy_3.1_SPI_%2B_LPC/FWH_Flasher
Thanks for the pointer. Of course, it had to be a teensy board, since all I have are arduinos and bluepills.
I'm just beginning to play with electronics so perhaps in the future something fast and dirty could be built on a protoboard. These programmer things look like good beginner projects. Will see.
Anyway, thank you very much for the information.
Best regards
Well this looks as if something could be done with a bluepill...
https://github.com/wosk/stm32-vserprog-lpc
El sáb, 27 nov 2021 a las 13:50, Betibeteka Beranduetxea (< artxitatel@gmail.com>) escribió:
El sáb, 27 nov 2021 a las 12:47, Nico Huber (nico.h@gmx.de) escribió:
Hi,
On 17.11.21 23:51, Betibeteka Beranduetxea wrote:
This is what I'm getting:> >
https://aliexpress.com/item/1005001614869060.html (adapter)> https://aliexpress.com/item/32725360255.html (burner + clamp,dirty cheap, I> wanted the clamp, couldn't resist it) this is an I2C/SPI programmer (says 24 25 series in the description) your flash chip is an LPC/FWH one (49 series). So this won't work. LPC programmers are not cheap (and that will likely not change as they are rarely used these days).
However, I wonder if you need a programmer at all. As long as both
machines are still booting, you should be able to read/write the BIOS flash with flashrom's "internal" programmer option. If in doubt, you can send us a verbose log (or paste it on paste.flashrom.org) taken with `flashrom -p internal -o logfile.txt`. Only if something goes wrong and one of the machines isn't booting anymore, you should need a separate programmer.
Shit happens. However I did purchase that programmed BIOS chip, so I could always unbrick the machine.
If you need a programmer, I'm not sure if I can give a good recom-
mendation. There is the teensy option [1], but it seems pretty much DIY. What many people do (and succeed) is hot-plugging these flash chips, but it comes with some risk of course. You can boot a PC normally, then, while it's running, swap flash chips and then read/write the second chip like you would during a BIOS update.
[1] https://www.flashrom.org/Teensy_3.1_SPI_%2B_LPC/FWH_Flasher
Thanks for the pointer. Of course, it had to be a teensy board, since all I have are arduinos and bluepills.
I'm just beginning to play with electronics so perhaps in the future something fast and dirty could be built on a protoboard. These programmer things look like good beginner projects. Will see.
Anyway, thank you very much for the information.
Best regards
-
Betibeteka Beranduetxea -
Ivan Ivanov -
Nico Huber