[flashrom] Big problem after flash of SST SST25VF016B on HP Compaq 615

[Parallix]

Good morning ;-)

Am Samstag, 9. Januar 2010 23:26:10 schrieben Sie:
> On 09.01.2010 23:04, Parallix wrote:
> > Mystery things do not stop. Now I succeeded when flashing the original
> > BIOS with the patched version as one can see by flashrom's output:
> >   
> 
> Ha!
> 
> > flashrom v0.9.1-r845 (patched)
> > No coreboot table found.
> > Found chipset "AMD SB700/SB710/SB750", enabling flash write... OK.
> > This chipset supports the following protocols: LPC,FWH,SPI.
> > Calibrating delay loop... OK.
> > Found chip "SST SST25VF016B" (2048 KB, SPI) at physical address 0xffe00000.
> > Flash image seems to be a legacy BIOS. Disabling checks.
> > Writing flash chip... Erasing flash before programming... done.
> > COMPLETE.
> > Verifying flash... VERIFIED.
> >
> > A verification by reading the BIOS (via flashrom -r <file>) and comparing it with
> > the original bios (via diff) shows the NO difference.
> >   
> 
> Great.

In fact!
 
> 
> > For now I think we can say good night.
> 
> Good night indeed.
> 
> 
> > But I would be very pleased if we fix
> > the problem tomorrow. The original job to flash a new bios isn't done up to
> > now ...
> >   
> 
> It will take our board enable specialists a while to create a board
> enable for you, so don't expect anything tomorrow. If you know where to
> find a service manual for your laptop or if you have any high-resolution
> photos of your mainboard, creating that board enable will be easier for
> us. We need to find out which SuperIO or EC (Embedded Controller) your
> board is using. superiotool unfortunately didn't find anything.

I will do my very best.

> In general, we recommend people to use the vendor flashing tools on
> laptops because the risk is much higher than on desktops where you can
> recover quite easily.

The bad thing is that vendors like Compaq respectively HP and some others,
in particular Sony, do not provide vendor flashing tools which can be used
without putting an unwanted operating system on the machine.

In former times it was usual that one was able to flash a BIOS after booting from
a DOS boot floppy and everything was running quite well. Now one needs a gra-
phical  user interface to be able to click on the "OK" button just to proceed a
BIOS flash. This brings perversion to a climax, doesn't it? And where do we want
be be tomorrow?

> Regards,
> Carl-Daniel

Best,

Parallix