[coreboot] flashrom: Probe for up to 3 flash chips. [was: Fix ambiguity, if a board is equipped with more than one chip]

[Claus Gindhart]

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-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
Von: Peter Stuge [mailto:peter at stuge.se]
Gesendet: Mo 5/5/2008 17:49
An: coreboot at coreboot.org
Cc: Claus Gindhart
Betreff: Re: [coreboot] flashrom: Probe for up to 3 flash chips. [was: Fix ambiguity, if a board is equipped with more than one chip]
 
On Mon, May 05, 2008 at 05:07:45PM +0200, Carl-Daniel Hailfinger wrote:
> Can we support probing for an arbitrary number of chips instead?

I think that is overly ambitious.

flashrom assumes that flash chips are top-aligned at 4GB so there
will not be very many flash chips actually connected in a way that
flashrom understands today.


> By using an array flash[] instead of flash, flash2 and flash3 this
> could be done in a loop without limits on the number of detected
> chips.

I thought [] too, but I set a fixed size. It's simple and cheap to
increase the size should there be need, and the code will deal.


> What happens if there are multiple flash chips of the same
> technology?

If same name, then same size and at same address => larger problem.


> Overall, I really like what the patch does.

Yes, me too.


Claus, can you please test the attached patch and send an Acked-by
line it if it works, then I'll commit.

Thanks!


//Peter

Hi Peter,

i've tested the patch, it worked; i've acked-by the attached patch.

This was my screen output
------------8-<----------
Multiple flash chips were detected: SST49LF008A M25P16 at ICH9
Please specify which chip to use with the -c <chipname> option.
----------8-<----------

About the question "Multiple flash chips of the same technology": In my opinion, this is a problem, which has to be solved in a different way, even in regards, how this could be presented to the user. One possible approach could be the following:

If we have multiple chips of the same type, all will be detected by the same probe-function. If we know, that this technology can support up to n identical chips, we could add n lines to flashchips.c, with the device names
   "chipxxx#1"
   "chipxxx#2"
   ...
   "chipxxx#n"
It's up to the probe function then, to handle this; the flashrom.c would need to be changed.

But for the moment i would recommend to wait, until such a board appears on somebody's desk.


-- 

Mit freundlichen Grüßen / Best regards

 Claus Gindhart
 SW R&D 
 Kontron Modular Computers
 phone :++49 (0)8341-803-374
 mailto:claus.gindhart at kontron.com 



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