[coreboot] (help me to get better) flashrom support for thinkpads with locked down opcodes

[Stefan Tauner]

Hi there!

As you probably all know the procedure to relieve the coreboot-
supported thinkpads from their proprietary firmware is not completely
trivial[1]. The main problem is that the vendor has locked down the
available SPI opcodes that we are allowed to use and this hinders
current flashrom to identify the flash chip.

Carl-Daniel has started to work on a patch that allows flashrom to use
a lower-quality identifying opcode (RES) on such locked down computers
without spoiling flashrom use on other devices. I have continued that
and we now have a patch that allows probing and reading on the
thinkpads. Erase (and hence write in practice) does not work yet,
because the available erase opcodes are also limited, but that will be
dealt with shortly(-ish :).

The current version of the patch can be found here:
http://patchwork.coreboot.org/patch/3726/

I would like to request the help of at least one volunteer who is able
to recover from failed flash attempts and is willing to revert to the
vendor firmware temporarily and spend some time testing patches we sent
him.

This will of course not make the coreboot conversion foolproof and is
quite late... but i am pretty sure it will still be welcomed by
newbies :)

Also, i would like to see a flashrom -V log of any affected machine
that is not a T60 (2007-GCG)[2] and is running the vendor firmware.

[1]: http://www.coreboot.org/Lenovo_x60x
[2]: http://paste.flashrom.org/view.php?id=635
-- 
Kind regards/Mit freundlichen Grüßen, Stefan Tauner