[flashrom] Problem with FLASHROM, results in error while updating BIOS. Please help me urgently..

[Michael Karcher]

Am Mittwoch, den 21.07.2010, 07:57 +0530 schrieb Ajay Pai P: :
> $ sudo flashrom -w /media/BACKUP/Backups/OS\ backups/windows/A8N-VM-ASUS-0902.ROM
> 
> flashrom v0.9.2-r1001 on Linux 2.6.31-ARCH (x86_64), built with libpci 3.1.7, GCC 4.5.0 20100520 (prerelease)
> flashrom is free software, get the source code at http://www.flashrom.org
> 
> No coreboot table found.
> Found chipset "NVIDIA MCP51", enabling flash write... OK.
> This chipset supports the following protocols: Non-SPI.
> Calibrating delay loop... OK.
> Found chip "SST SST49LF004A/B" (512 KB, FWH) at physical address 0xfff80000.
> Flash image seems to be a legacy BIOS. Disabling checks.
> Writing flash chip... Erasing flash chip... ERASE FAILED at 0x00000008! Expected=0xff, Read=0x90, failed byte count from 0x00000000-0x00000fff: 0xfe7
> ERASE FAILED!
> ERASE FAILED at 0x00000008! Expected=0xff, Read=0x90, failed byte count from 0x00000000-0x0000ffff: 0xfefe
Sorry for the late reply. Most flashrom people are living in Europe and
just were sleeping while sent your message.

> Now I am not able to decide what is to be done. I am not sure if I ran
> the commands properly or if the BIOS chip is fine or not.
You ran the command properly, and very likely your BIOS chip is
unchanged. The error you are getting is a typical symptom of a board
adding write/erase protection that has to be removed in a board-specific
way.

flashrom r1001 (the last official release) does not yet know the Asus
A8N-VM, but support for a mainboard called "Asus A8N-VM CSM"  has been
added in the SVN revision r1064 (and fixed to really work in r1071).
Please upgrade to the current development release and retry.
Instructions for installing it can be found at
http://flashrom.org/Downloads . It does not matter whether you use svn
for downloading or download a snapshot. If the "A8N-VM" is different
from the "A8N-VM CSM", it still could fail, though. In that case, please
send us

a) the output of flashrom -V
b) the output of lspci -vvvxxxnn (run as root)
c) the output of superiotool -deV
(http://www.coreboot.org/Superiotool#Installation )
d) a link to an official BIOS download of your mainboard.

This information can be used to add support for your mainboard to
flashrom.

Regards,
  Michael Karcher