[flashrom] 3C905CX-TX-M not supported (But flashrom thinks it is).

[Uwe Hermann]

Hi,

On Fri, Sep 18, 2009 at 06:38:27AM -0600, Marko Kraljevic wrote:
> Hi, the other day I got a 3C905CX-TX-M NIC.
> 
> I don't have the computer I tested it on up and running right now,
> but it is non-functional. Flashrom can not detect the AT49BV512 on
> it. A forced read delivers all 0xFF's, which I assume it is pulling
> out of the ether.
> I guess it *could* be blank; It seems unlikely to not autodetect and
> function on a forced read though.

Hm, please send the full "flashrom -p nic3om -V" output to the list.

Also, what is the "lspci -xxxvvv" output?


> Anyways, this wouldn't be an issue, but the PCI device ID is the
> same as the 3C905C-TX [dev_id 0x9200] (*iirc - it might be one of
> the other supported 3C905 NICs*), so flashrom reports it as a
> supported NIC.
> 
> I guess there should be a note somewhere, specifying that flashrom
> doesn't support 3com NICs with the newer, smaller, BGA package ASIC.

That's unrelated, the BGA package doesn't affect the flashing
capabilities in any way.

However, the chip may indeed be empty. I just used flashrom r731 on a
3Com NIC with BGA packaged chip, which also had an empty chip:

$ ./flashrom -p nic3com -r nic.dd
flashrom v0.9.1-r731
Found "3COM 3C905C: EtherLink 10/100 PCI (TX)" (10b7:9200, BDF 05:04.0).
Calibrating delay loop... OK.
Found chip "Atmel AT49BV512" (64 KB, Parallel) at physical address 0xffff0000.
Reading flash... done.

$ hexdump nic.dd 
0000000 ffff ffff ffff ffff ffff ffff ffff ffff
*
0010000

However, writing a random image into the chip works fine, so the chip
was simply empty in my case indeed.


> Here's a photo of the card. On mine the flash is soldered on, but I
> believe I've seen socketed versions in the past. If they're all
> soldered on, I guess it doesn't matter much - apart from saving
> someone the time of soldering on a socket.

Yep, soldered or socketed doesn't matter here. As it's a NIC any
misflashed images can easily be fixed, the card is not automatically
and terminally "bricked" (like it's the case with mainboards with
soldered chips).


> I'll try and get that computer back up this weekend and post the output.

Yep, please do.


Thanks, Uwe.
-- 
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