[flashrom] HELP! "...flash chip is in an unknown state"

[Bernard Matthews]

Hi Help,

I thought I did what was right, but apparently I'm missing something.

System details:

BioStar TA785G3 v 6.1 according to the printing on the mainboard.

Athlon II X3 435.

Label on factory CMOS: 88GAP901BST.  But the date showing on boot is 3/31/2010.

I'm trying to replace the CMOS info because of an intermittent board
failure that I felt I had reduced to either a processor failure or a
board failure.

The mainboard comes with a built-in utility on F12 to flash the new
file, but it rejects the file claiming that the BIOS ID does not
match.

The new file came from Biostar.  I actually downloaded two copies, one
from Taiwan, and one from USA, and diff'd them to make sure they were
the same.

So below are the results of my attempt to flash the chip :-(.


Here's my initial run to check for compatibility with my board (blank
spaces/lines added for legibility)
==============================================================
grml at grml /mnt/2011_home/netvista % sudo flashrom

flashrom v0.9.2-r1141 on Linux 2.6.36-grml (i686), built with libpci
3.1.7, GCC 4.4.5 20100728 (prerelease), little endian
flashrom is free software, get the source code at http://www.flashrom.org

Calibrating delay loop... OK.
No coreboot table found.
Found ITE Super I/O, id 8718
Found chipset "AMD SB700/SB710/SB750", enabling flash write... OK.
This chipset supports the following protocols: LPC,FWH,SPI.
Found chip "Macronix MX25L8005" (1024 KB, SPI) at physical address 0xfff00000.
No operations were specified.
==============================================================

grml at grml /mnt/2011_home/netvista % sudo flashrom -r 88GAP901_BST_20110411.BST

flashrom v0.9.2-r1141 on Linux 2.6.36-grml (i686), built with libpci
3.1.7, GCC 4.4.5 20100728 (prerelease), little endian
flashrom is free software, get the source code at http://www.flashrom.org

Calibrating delay loop... OK.
No coreboot table found.
Found ITE Super I/O, id 8718
Found chipset "AMD SB700/SB710/SB750", enabling flash write... OK.
This chipset supports the following protocols: LPC,FWH,SPI.
Found chip "Macronix MX25L8005" (1024 KB, SPI) at physical address 0xfff00000.
Block protection could not be disabled!
Reading flash... done.

==============================================================

At this point, I did a Google search for "Block protection could not
be disabled", but did not find anything that said THIS MEANS YOU WON'T
BE ABLE TO ERASE!

So, I forged ahead:

==============================================================

grml at grml /mnt/2011_home/netvista % ls -l *BST

-r--r--r-- 1 root root 1048576 2011-04-12 05:57 88GAP901_BST_20110411.BST
grml at grml /mnt/2011_home/netvista % cd Down*


grml at grml /mnt/2011_home/netvista/Downloads % ls -l *BST

-r--r--r-- 1 grml users 1048576 2011-04-10 07:43 88GAP804.BST

==============================================================

The above lines show that the file that I'm going to write with
(88GAP804.BST)  is the same size as the one that I saved from the chip
(88GAP901_BST_20110411.BST).

==============================================================

grml at grml /mnt/2011_home/netvista/Downloads % sudo flashrom -w 88GAP804.BST
flashrom v0.9.2-r1141 on Linux 2.6.36-grml (i686), built with libpci
3.1.7, GCC 4.4.5 20100728 (prerelease), little endian
flashrom is free software, get the source code at http://www.flashrom.org

Calibrating delay loop... OK.
No coreboot table found.
Found ITE Super I/O, id 8718
Found chipset "AMD SB700/SB710/SB750", enabling flash write... OK.
This chipset supports the following protocols: LPC,FWH,SPI.
Found chip "Macronix MX25L8005" (1024 KB, SPI) at physical address 0xfff00000.
Block protection could not be disabled!
Flash image seems to be a legacy BIOS. Disabling checks.
Writing flash chip... Erasing flash before programming... Erasing flash chip...

ERASE FAILED at 0x0000000c! Expected=0xff, Read=0xec, failed byte
count from 0x00000000-0x00000fff: 0xf9d
ERASE FAILED!
ERASE FAILED at 0x0000000c! Expected=0xff, Read=0xec, failed byte
count from 0x00000000-0x0000ffff: 0xf8fa
ERASE FAILED!
ERASE FAILED at 0x0000000c! Expected=0xff, Read=0xec, failed byte
count from 0x00000000-0x0000ffff: 0xf8fa
ERASE FAILED!
ERASE FAILED at 0x0000000c! Expected=0xff, Read=0xec, failed byte
count from 0x00000000-0x000fffff: 0xdc5ed
ERASE FAILED!
ERASE FAILED at 0x0000000c! Expected=0xff, Read=0xec, failed byte
count from 0x00000000-0x000fffff: 0xdc5ed
ERASE FAILED!
FAILED!
ERASE FAILED!
FAILED!
Your flash chip is in an unknown state.
Get help on IRC at irc.freenode.net (channel #flashrom) or
mail flashrom at flashrom.org!
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
DO NOT REBOOT OR POWEROFF!
sudo flashrom -w 88GAP804.BST  8.37s user 0.07s system 99% cpu 8.489 total

==============================================================

So, since the erase failed, shouldn't I be okay?  Unless my cats press
a button or pull a wire, I will leave the machine on for a response.

Thank you very much for your help in advance!

----- bernard