Suggested mechanism of burning a LinuxBIOS on FLASH ROMS

Richard Smith rsmith at bitworks.com
Wed Apr 9 16:13:01 CEST 2003


Deepak Kotian wrote:

>     any O.S started on this machine, which means I would need to replace the
>     BIOS FLASH ROM with a one with proper BIOS and bring up the machine.
>     Is there a way I can re-program the old BIOS on to the corrupted FLASH ROMS.
>     Please note,I do not have a PLC or any kind of FLASH programmer with me. Can
>     I do without it.
>     
>     If there are any suggestions, please let me know.

Deepak,

Something you might also consider is an ROM Emulator.  One that will do 
a larger flash is still expensive but not as expensive as a good 
flash/eeprom programmer.
With a ROM emulator you remove the original BIOS chip and plug in the 
emulator.  Then you download you code into the emulator.  The target 
never knows the difference.  This also saves a lot of time in the 
code-test-recode cycle as the emulator is usually much faster than 
re-flashing a chip.

Of course if your chip is soldered on the board it's not really an option.

I've done a good bit of my developemnt with a 1-Mbit ROM emulator from 
tech-tools called the EconoROM and a DIP to 32pin PLCC adapter.  1Mbit 
gets you 128k of space which will hold Linuxbios fine.

The emulator + adapter would probally run you $400-$500.

--
Richard A. Smith
rsmith at bitworks.com





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