Intel SCH Poulsbo

[MONDON Daniel]

Hi!

Flashrom V0.9.4-r1395 results:
Found chipset « Intel SCH Poulsbo”
Found SST flash chip “SST49LF008A” (1024kB, FWM) @ 0xfff00000

I am under TCL (TinyCore Linux).

Flashing Bios is OK, but erasing flash need many loops to erase all flash (from 0x1000 to 0xFF000 = 256 loops).
But sometimes, it is ok in one time.

What can I do to increase erasing speed (times) … or is there any known bug … perhaps increasing timeout … or ?

Thanks
Daniel.

Daniel MONDON 
Ingénieur d'applications

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[Stefan Tauner]

On Tue, 20 Sep 2011 14:31:22 +0200
"MONDON Daniel"  wrote:
> Hi!
>
> Flashrom V0.9.4-r1395 results:
> Found chipset « Intel SCH Poulsbo”
> Found SST flash chip “SST49LF008A” (1024kB, FWM) @ 0xfff00000
>
> I am under TCL (TinyCore Linux).
>
> Flashing Bios is OK, but erasing flash need many loops to erase all flash (from 0x1000 to 0xFF000 = 256 loops).
> But sometimes, it is ok in one time.
>
> What can I do to increase erasing speed (times) … or is there any known bug … perhaps increasing timeout … or ?

hello daniel,

if you could provide some verbose (-V) logs of said behavior we might
be able to tell you the reason. i believe that sometimes parts of the
chip's contents and the file to be written are equal. flashrom will not
try to erase those sectors then and just print S (for skip; in verbose
mode only).
if you have not found a bug, then there is probably not much potential
for speedup on internal programmers (i.e. motherboards). they are
usually limited by the speed of the flash chip and/or its bus. erasing
flash chips can take quite some time - more than one minute - depending
on the model. in your case though it seems to be very fast according
to the data sheet... what durations are we talking about btw?

i have also marked the SST49LF008A as fully tested and will commit that
later.

[Feldschmid, Ingo]

Actually, there seems to be a problem with the combination Poulsbo chipset + SST49LF008A erase toggle test. 
The bit toggle test which tests if a write or erase command has been finished is always succeeding, even though the flash chip hasn't been finished. This leads to the next write or erase command to fail, since the chip is not ready to accept a new command at this time. The only safe solution to this problem has been to wait the maximum write/erase time after each write or erase command. I haven't seen any way to integrate this into the flashrom trunk, since it would have to change write/erase timings for a specific flashchip dependent on the detected chipset....

Best regards,
Ingo

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-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
Von: [e-mail] [mailto:[e-mail]] Im Auftrag von Stefan Tauner
Gesendet: Samstag, 1. Oktober 2011 00:09
An: MONDON Daniel
Cc: [e-mail]
Betreff: Re: [flashrom] Intel SCH Poulsbo

On Tue, 20 Sep 2011 14:31:22 +0200
"MONDON Daniel"  wrote:
> Hi!
>
> Flashrom V0.9.4-r1395 results:
> Found chipset « Intel SCH Poulsbo”
> Found SST flash chip “SST49LF008A” (1024kB, FWM) @ 0xfff00000
>
> I am under TCL (TinyCore Linux).
>
> Flashing Bios is OK, but erasing flash need many loops to erase all flash (from 0x1000 to 0xFF000 = 256 loops).
> But sometimes, it is ok in one time.
>
> What can I do to increase erasing speed (times) … or is there any known bug … perhaps increasing timeout … or ?

hello daniel,

if you could provide some verbose (-V) logs of said behavior we might
be able to tell you the reason. i believe that sometimes parts of the
chip's contents and the file to be written are equal. flashrom will not
try to erase those sectors then and just print S (for skip; in verbose
mode only).
if you have not found a bug, then there is probably not much potential
for speedup on internal programmers (i.e. motherboards). they are
usually limited by the speed of the flash chip and/or its bus. erasing
flash chips can take quite some time - more than one minute - depending
on the model. in your case though it seems to be very fast according
to the data sheet... what durations are we talking about btw?

i have also marked the SST49LF008A as fully tested and will commit that
later.