[coreboot] [LinuxBIOS] W39V040BPZ or vt8237. Flashing problems.

[Corey Osgood]

On Mon, 2008-03-03 at 22:50 +0100, Carl-Daniel Hailfinger wrote:
> Hi Adam,
> 
> did you figure out the reason of the bad interaction between vt8237 and 
> W39V040BPZ?
> 
> On 29.09.2007 19:59, Adam Talbot wrote:
> > Some more information to follow.  If possible, I would like to try to
> > fix this.  So, if any one has a few good places to look, and some good
> > places in the code to add debug statements, that would be great.  I am
> > not all that familiar with flashrom, yet. What other BIOS chips are on
> > the CN700+VT8237 boards, I would like a different chip, just to prove it
> > is not the chip(s).
> > -Adam Talbot
> >
> > v21g flashrom # ./flashrom -r backup.bin
> > Calibrating delay loop... ok
> > No LinuxBIOS table found.
> > Found chipset "VT8237": Enabling flash write... OK.
> > W39V040B found at physical address: 0xfff80000
> > Flash part is W39V040B (512 KB)
> > Reading Flash...done
> >   
> 
> Flash chip is found, reading out works fine.
> 
> > v21g flashrom # time ./flashrom -wV backup.bin
> > Calibrating delay loop... 496M loops per second. ok
> > No LinuxBIOS table found.
> > Found chipset "VT8237": Enabling flash write... OK.
> > [...]
> > Probing for W39V040B, 512 KB
> > probe_jedec: id1 0xda, id2 0x54
> > W39V040B found at physical address: 0xfff80000
> > Flash part is W39V040B (512 KB)
> > Flash image seems to be a legacy BIOS. Disabling checks.
> >   
> 
> Chip found again, is being erased before the writing starts.
> 
> > Programming Page: 0000 at address: 0x00000000
> >   
> 
> It hangs here.
> 
> > ### Ctrl-C ###
> > real    1134m28.975s
> > user    1134m49.425s
> > sys     0m0.277s
> >
> >
> > v21g flashrom # ./flashrom               
> > Calibrating delay loop... ok
> > No LinuxBIOS table found.
> > Found chipset "VT8237": Enabling flash write... OK.
> > No EEPROM/flash device found.
> >   
> 
> I'm seeing exactly the same symptoms with a W39V040BPZ on my MCP51 
> Asrock K8NF4G-SATA2 board. Strange fact: If I hot-unplug the flash chip 
> and hot-replug it, it is recognized again. Reading it shows the erase 
> was successful, but once I try to program even one byte, communication 
> with the flash chip fails completely and I have to unplug and replug to 
> fix that.

I'm seeing exactly the same thing with the cn700+vt8237r on Jetway
J7F2W, same flash chip, except that where it hangs seems random. I had
assumed the flash chips were write protected in some way that I didn't
care to work around, since they're the factory BIOS. Removing the chip
then reinserting it allows flashrom to detect it again, and writing
actually works and verifys, extremely slowly, perhaps 1 out of 100
times. PMC PM49FL004 works perfectly fine on the same board.

-Corey