[flashrom] ASUS M5A97: success

[Melchior FRANZ]

* On Sunday 03 February 2013 11:26:55 Stefan Tauner wrote:
> > On Sunday 03 February 2013 08:44:37 Melchior FRANZ wrote:
> > > +        Serial Number: MB-1234567890
> >                              ^^^^^^^^^^
> not very surprising actually. vendors usually fill those fields with
> dummy data only. in theory it could also be flashrom's fault because if
> the vendor really uses the field the flash updating tool should probably
> preserve the bits similar to MAC addresses of onboard NICs (but
> flashrom does not and just writes whatever is in the image).

Ahh, right, that makes sense. I compared my previous BIOS memory
contents with the original version 0705, and there are four areas
that differ. All memory in the ASUS file has 0xff set throughout,
where mine had data.  

(1) 000c17-00bd8c (45430 Bytes; custom settings like storage devices)
(2) 00fef0-00ffef (256 Bytes; ???)
(3) 014008-014052 (74 Bytes; contains former serial number and MAC)
(4) 37c664-37c691 (45 Bytes; contains former serial number)

Overwriting these areas with 0xff doesn't seem to have done any
harm. The MAC address was in 1404d-14052 -- it's no longer there
after flashing BIOS 1605, but ifconfig still knows it, so I assume
it's also stored in the ethernet hardware. I don't find the new
"serial number" 1234567890 in the new 1605 BIOS, nor in the current
BIOS dump (neither little/big endian hex, nor ascii).

m.