[flashrom] Support for ASRock 890GX Extreme3 mainboard

[Stefan Tauner]

On Wed, 29 Feb 2012 11:53:40 -0800
Svetoslav Trochev <svetoslav.trochev at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi Everybody,
> 
> I am new here, so my apology if I am doing something wrong.
> I have ASRock 890GX Extreme3 mainboard. This board has ability to be
> flashed using standard BIOS, but never the less I decided to test
> Flashrom.
> I read the "Board Testing HOWTO" [1]. First signs are that this board
> will work out of the box with "flashrom v0.9.4-r1394 on Linux
> 3.0.4-pmagic (i686), built with libpci 3.1.7, GCC 4.6.1, little
> endian"
> What I have done so far:
> 1. Ran 'flashrom' command and it detected the chip: Winbond W25Q80.
> 2. Ran 'flashrom -R xxxx.rom' and it completed with no errors. I
> examine the file and it looks like normal ROM file.
> 3. Ran 'flashrom -V' I am attaching the output.
> 4. I try comparing the backup copy of the EEPROM with the original
> file provided by ASRock. It is different. They have exact same header,
> but quite different.
> 5. Because I am not 100% sure that I have good backup I decided to
> order spare chip and continue with the test later. ( I have external
> EEPROM programmer ) I will continue this weekend.
> 
> Thank you and any comments are welcome and highly appreciated,
> Svetoslav Trochev
> 
> [1] http://www.flashrom.org/Board_Testing_HOWTO

the board works in general (not 100% sure about 0.9.4, but pretty
confident it will do):
http://flashrom.org/Supported_hardware#Supported_mainboards

the differences in the files could come from runtime data that the bios
stores in the flash (e.g. logging) or some board-specific settings
(like mac addresses) which are not part of the vendor image. partly
correct reads are possible but quite uncommon.

if you really wanna be prepared to use the external programmer, make
sure that it supports SPI chips.

-- 
Kind regards/Mit freundlichen Grüßen, Stefan Tauner