[coreboot] ThinkPad X230 alternative flash chips?

[Trammell Hudson]

4 MB was quite limiting and it seemed like an artificial restriction,
especially since all the other machines have larger space available.
Since flashing both chips with an external programmer is a bit of a
pain, there is still a 4 MB version built with just flashrom and the
USB drivers.  So you can flash that one, reboot into it, mount your
flash drive and then run flashrom to write the full 7 MB image
with all the tools.

If the management engine is cleaned there is even more space available,
with the caveat that the e1000 ethernet stops working since the kernel
can't coordinate its handoff with the ME.

To paraphrase billg: "7MB ought to be enouh for anybody".

-- 
Trammell

On Sat, Apr 15, 2017 at 06:11:14AM +0000, Thierry Laurion wrote:
> In fact, all the 7mb is now available.
> Check that out! https://github.com/osresearch/heads/releases/tag/v0.2.0
> 
> Le ven. 14 avr. 2017 à 23:38, Thierry Laurion <thierry.laurion at gmail.com> a
> écrit :
> 
> > The x230 has two rom chips. One that has 4mb that boots the system, and
> > one that is 8mb that holds ME. http://osresearch.net/ planned on using
> > freed space in the ME after deactivating it, but I haven't seen usage of
> > that freed space yet.
> >
> > Le ven. 14 avr. 2017 à 21:15, Marek Behun <kabel at blackhole.sk> a écrit :
> >
> >> > It looks like the X230 already has a large flash chip
> >> > (BOARD_ROMSIZE_12288?). How big were you thinking? The main issue
> >> > would be that chips bigger than 16MB use 4-byte addresses and the SPI
> >> > controller in Ivy Bridge probably only supports 3-byte addresses.
> >>
> >> I have ordered two 32 MB Macronix chips, with the hope to have 64 MB of
> >> space. If what you say is true, they won't work :(
> >>
> >> Marek
> >> --
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> >
> >

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