[coreboot] new, need help and whatnot

[David Hendricks]

On Wed, Jul 24, 2013 at 5:37 PM, David Giard <swe3tdave at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi everyone,
>
> This is my second email the first one did not get through, i think..
> Anyway, this is a copy of the first one, with a few changes.. :)
>
> i'm new here(obviously),
>

welcome!

i've been talking to a few members already, after generating these logs, i
> played with flashrom and ended up with a Brick. I already ordered a Bus
> Pirate, and i already received my soic clips, so all is not lost.
>
> i have an Intel S3420GPLC Server Motherboard. Specs are here:
> http://download.intel.com/support/motherboards/server/s3420gp/sb/s3420gp_tps_r2_4.pdf
>
> msrtool.log is empty, got a core dump.
>
> rom.bin is here:
> https://docs.google.com/file/d/0Bx4lQySb-zrCT0RmVlB4d2pGa00/edit?usp=sharing
>
> Thankfully the rom looks complete so i should be able to unbrick the
> thing.. The board has an ME and a BMC, and yes i know that's probably why i
> ended up with a brick. I mean i could see the big warning sign in the docs,
> i just, well, wanted to learn something... :P There is a recovery bios on
> the thing, but it does not seems to work right now... ;) To think that i'm
> actually laughing about it is really something... :)
>
> i hope you guys can use these logs(see attached files).. :)
>

Sounds like you've already identified the problem and are well on your way
to recovering your board. There are a few caveats though:
- Some boards do not isolate the ROM circuitry well, and your programmer
(Bus Pirate) may backpower motherboard components such as the ME, which
will attempt to boot and interfere with flashrom. So you may need to hold
the board in reset while you flash using the Bus Pirate in order for it to
be successful.

- It is possible that when you read the ROM content earlier on that the ME
interfered by changing the SPI address and doing something while flashrom
was running. If that happened, your image may be corrupt and will need to
get a new firmware image from Intel's website and flash it instead.

Good luck!


-- 
David Hendricks (dhendrix)
Systems Software Engineer, Google Inc.
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