[flashrom] Appreciate for developing HM65 BIOS R\W tool SW

[Stefan Tauner]

On Thu, 17 Jan 2013 17:28:53 +0800
朱智会 <zhuzhihui at chinalotsynergy.com> wrote:

> Dear Sir/Madam
> 
>  
> 
> This is Jake zhu and David Du from China Lotsynergy, our company is an IPC
> based system integrated provider located in Guangzhou, China. To meet our
> customer’s requirement of providing a BIOS R\W tool (OS:  FC14 Core Ver. 2.
> 6.35.6--45.fc14.i686 (i686)), we tried to seek proper tool in internet and
> found FlashRom at the first time.
> 
> We downloaded FlashRom Ver L: v0.9.4-r1455 and used following command
> #flashrom -r sysbios.bin, but fail with below error info:
> 
> 
> 
> After double check the supported chipset list in website, we found the South
> Bridge Chipset HM65 is not supported; however BIOS Flash Chip (W25Q32) is
> supported (see below).
> 
>      
> 
> So write to you for help to develop a BIOS R\W tools SW (/OS: FC14 Core Ver.
> 2.6.35.6--45.fc14.i686 (i686), and below the necessary info for your
> reference, due to tight schedule of project, we do appreciate for your great
> help to develop the mentioned tools SW within next week.

Hello David, 

in general the chipset as well as the flash chip are well supported by
flashrom. The Intel chipsets can however be configured to restrict flash
access very firmly. There are various ways to restrict it (forbidden
opcodes, write- and read-protected addresses ranges of different kinds
etc.). If the board does not set up too many restrictions, flashrom
will work for you without problems.

The "error" (it is a warning actually, and you can and should read about
the details in the man page how to force flashrom to continue) is
because the SMBIOS/DMI table in the firmware indicates that it is a
mobile device and those sometimes behave in dangerous ways. This is
especially the case if the flash chip is not attached to the
southbridge but and EC which is sitting between the southbridge and the
flash chip.

You should also update to a newer version, 0.9.4 is pretty old and I
have done quite some work on the intel-related code.

When you found out how to tell flashrom to continue even though it
thinks it is running on a laptop please send us the output of
flashrom -p internal -VV

I can then tell you some details about the restrictions set up in the
current firmware.

-- 
Kind regards/Mit freundlichen Grüßen, Stefan Tauner