[flashrom] verbose log of unsupported mainboard Foxconn Q45M

[Stefan Tauner]

On Thu, 20 Sep 2012 14:40:04 +0100
Andrew Goodbody <ajg4tadpole at gmail.com> wrote:

> On 20/09/12 14:05, Stefan Tauner wrote:
> > Normally the BIOS settings are not stored in the flash chip (but in
> > NVRAM), although there is nothing stopping firmware vendors doing so.
> > Usually flashing tools do not care about preserving, changing or
> > resetting NVRAM contents and they are reset by the firmware itself if
> > it detects a version mismatch on the first boot after the flashing.
> 
> Just FYI, UEFI variables are stored in the flash by UEFI firmware. 
> Almost nothing is stored in the CMOS NVRAM on modern PCs.
> 
> > If the configuration data is really stored in flash on this board, i
> > think the probability that they are stored in the platform region are
> > quite high.
> >> 0x64: 0x027f0270 FREG4: Platform Data region (0x00270000-0x0027ffff) is read-write.
> 
> That is a pure guess based on no evidence, AFAICT. It is quite easy to 
> find the UEFI variables in the flash image, once it has been read out, 
> as the variable names are there in ASCII for those variables that have 
> been set to non-default values.

Right. And the Q45M seems to use UEFI.
In that case the locked ME firmware remains the major obstacle, because
we still don't know if the ME requires to be updated together with the
BIOS region *in general*.

In the case of the Q45M, the latest firmware update archive contains
different binaries: (presumably) image of the whole flash space, images
for each flash chip, and one image for the BIOS region only.
The interesting bit is that the batch file included uses only the latter
to write to the BIOS region. So i think it is safe to assume, that
updating that region only is ok, which makes flashrom (including my
layout patches) suitable for the job of reading the (updated, and
configured) region out and deploying it on the other machines.

Marc: you said you tried that before with your DOS-based setup. Which
tool did you try? The DOS version of fpt.exe? What did not work exactly?

-- 
Kind regards/Mit freundlichen Grüßen, Stefan Tauner