Success Report - Intel Z370 on MSI Z370-A PRO motherboard

[aspen]

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Hash: SHA256

Hi, I succesfully flashed an official MSI BIOS (version 7B48v2C) onto my MSI Z370-A PRO motherboard (Intel Z370 chipset, Intel Core i7 8086k CPU) using flashrom 1.2.

It scared me as first, then it showed the BIOS screen... then rebooted a few times, then it booted succesfully!

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=ioGw

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[Clay Daniels]

Congrats, Aspen. I have a MSI X570-A PRO (MS-7C37) Motherboard and trying
to get flashrom v1.2 on FreeBSD 13.0-CURRENT to recognize my mb. Looking at
the supported hardware at https://www.flashrom.org/Supported_hardware I
don't see my mb NOR yours either. Give me a little more detail on how you
made this happen on a fairly recent MSI mb like ours. (On or off list).

Clay

On Wed, Sep 9, 2020 at 2:52 AM aspen via flashrom <[e-mail]>
wrote:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
>
> Hash: SHA256
>
> Hi, I succesfully flashed an official MSI BIOS (version 7B48v2C) onto my
> MSI Z370-A PRO motherboard (Intel Z370 chipset, Intel Core i7 8086k CPU)
> using flashrom 1.2.
>
> It scared me as first, then it showed the BIOS screen... then rebooted a
> few times, then it booted succesfully!
>
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
>
> iHUEARYIAB0WIQT9GEgotw7oWiVcdotzKTKWiWXeVgUCX1gJdQAKCRBzKTKWiWXe
>
> VuRbAP9KNqpOELFGRFGO3yjHS1jX6dY73+1bJQdPEyhU4BQq1AEAgAZ36LLZs5kg
>
> MI4jDZnzxIgMeDNm+2XNCWxj7qWWPQY=
>
> =ioGw
>
> -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
>
> _______________________________________________
> flashrom mailing list -- [e-mail]
> To unsubscribe send an email to [e-mail]

[Angel Pons]

Hi list,

On Wed, Sep 9, 2020 at 9:07 PM Clay Daniels <[e-mail]> wrote:
> Congrats, Aspen. I have a MSI X570-A PRO (MS-7C37) Motherboard and trying to get flashrom v1.2 on FreeBSD 13.0-CURRENT to recognize my mb. Looking at the supported hardware at https://www.flashrom.org/Supported_hardware I don't see my mb NOR yours either. Give me a little more detail on how you made this happen on a fairly recent MSI mb like ours. (On or off list).

While both mainboards are new, they're night and day. The MSI
Z370-A-PRO is an Intel platform, whereas the MSI X570-A PRO is an AMD
platform.

One of the main use-cases of flashrom is to rewrite the boot firmware
(BIOS, UEFI, coreboot...), and flashrom is often used to flash
coreboot onto things. What's more, coreboot and flashrom use the same
review infrastructure [1], so it's easy for coreboot developers to
contribute to flashrom. There's coreboot support for Intel Coffee
Lake, but not for AMD Zen stuff; and flashrom support is in a similar
situation.

I know there's some patches that enable support floating around.
However, I don't think anyone pushed anything for review (if so, I
must have missed it). There might be something in the GitHub pull
requests, but I haven't checked. Since the GitHub repo is a mirror,
it's not possible to accept pull requests through it, and transferring
the PRs to Gerrit isn't trivial because of the sign-off requirement
[2]. Yes, that page also mentions using GitHub, but it then says that
one should use Gerrit instead. Maybe I'll rewrite that part at some
point.

[1]: https://review.coreboot.org
[2]: https://flashrom.org/Development_Guidelines#Sign-off_Procedure
> Clay
>
> On Wed, Sep 9, 2020 at 2:52 AM aspen via flashrom <[e-mail]> wrote:
> > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> > Hash: SHA256
> >
> > Hi, I succesfully flashed an official MSI BIOS (version 7B48v2C) onto my MSI Z370-A PRO motherboard (Intel Z370 chipset, Intel Core i7 8086k CPU) using flashrom 1.2.
> > It scared me as first, then it showed the BIOS screen... then rebooted a few times, then it booted succesfully!
> >
> > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
> >
> > iHUEARYIAB0WIQT9GEgotw7oWiVcdotzKTKWiWXeVgUCX1gJdQAKCRBzKTKWiWXe
> > VuRbAP9KNqpOELFGRFGO3yjHS1jX6dY73+1bJQdPEyhU4BQq1AEAgAZ36LLZs5kg
> > MI4jDZnzxIgMeDNm+2XNCWxj7qWWPQY=
> > =ioGw
> >
> > -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
> > _______________________________________________
> > flashrom mailing list -- [e-mail]
> > To unsubscribe send an email to [e-mail]
>
> _______________________________________________
> flashrom mailing list -- [e-mail]
> To unsubscribe send an email to [e-mail]

Best regards,
Angel

[Clay Daniels]

On Wed, Sep 9, 2020 at 5:36 PM Angel Pons <[e-mail]> wrote:
> Hi list,
>
> On Wed, Sep 9, 2020 at 9:07 PM Clay Daniels <[e-mail]>
> wrote:
> > Congrats, Aspen. I have a MSI X570-A PRO (MS-7C37) Motherboard and
>
> trying to get flashrom v1.2 on FreeBSD 13.0-CURRENT to recognize my mb.
> Looking at the supported hardware at
> https://www.flashrom.org/Supported_hardware I don't see my mb NOR yours
> either. Give me a little more detail on how you made this happen on a
> fairly recent MSI mb like ours. (On or off list).
>
> While both mainboards are new, they're night and day. The MSI
> Z370-A-PRO is an Intel platform, whereas the MSI X570-A PRO is an AMD
> platform.
>
> One of the main use-cases of flashrom is to rewrite the boot firmware
> (BIOS, UEFI, coreboot...), and flashrom is often used to flash
> coreboot onto things. What's more, coreboot and flashrom use the same
> review infrastructure [1], so it's easy for coreboot developers to
> contribute to flashrom. There's coreboot support for Intel Coffee
> Lake, but not for AMD Zen stuff; and flashrom support is in a similar
> situation.
>
> I know there's some patches that enable support floating around.
> However, I don't think anyone pushed anything for review (if so, I
> must have missed it). There might be something in the GitHub pull
> requests, but I haven't checked. Since the GitHub repo is a mirror,
> it's not possible to accept pull requests through it, and transferring
> the PRs to Gerrit isn't trivial because of the sign-off requirement
> [2]. Yes, that page also mentions using GitHub, but it then says that
> one should use Gerrit instead. Maybe I'll rewrite that part at some
> point.
>
> [1]: https://review.coreboot.org
> [2]: https://flashrom.org/Development_Guidelines#Sign-off_Procedure

Angel, thanks for the useful info. I'm still trying to wrap my head around
flashrom & coreboot and appreciate your response.

Clay