[flashrom] W836xx: HP Mini 110-3700: flashrom -V

[Stefan Tauner]

On Thu, 24 Jan 2013 22:42:22 -0500
Olivier Langlois <olivier at olivierlanglois.net> wrote:

> I am following the instruction found in the flashrom -V output. I want
> to attempt replacing the evil RSA signed Insyde BIOS that stops me from
> installing PCIe Mini cards of my choice.
> 
> I do not fully understand yet all the output of flashrom and why the
> flash chip autodetection is limited to a very small subset of the
> supported chips but I have taken a look on the motherboard and I have
> spotted a Winbond W25Q16 chip on it.

Because...
> Found chipset "Intel NM10" with PCI ID 8086:27bc. Enabling flash write... 
> …
> GCS = 0x5d0c60: BIOS Interface Lock-Down: disabled, Boot BIOS Straps: 0x3 (LPC)

The chipset is configured to boot via LPC, hence we do only probe for
LPC chips. But your chip is SPI, how does that fit together? The
solution of this apparent contradiction is that the superio is
translating between LPC on the host side and SPI on the flash side.
This is (or was) a common scheme in laptops and one of the reasons why
adding support for them is so hard (the superio datasheets are often
hard to come by). There is nobody working on adding support for your
superio ATM, but Carl-Daniel might have a further developed patch on
his harddisk or be able to give you more details about it.

> I have started to modify inteltool and msrtool in order to support my
> processor (Intel Atom N455). I will probably join your dev mailing list
> to offer my patches when they are ready and also ask advices for my
> coreboot project.

I am looking forward to it :)
For most other coreboot-related topics there is the
coreboot at coreboot.org mailing list, and all none-flashrom patches
should be submitted via gerrit, see http://www.coreboot.org/Git

-- 
Kind regards/Mit freundlichen Grüßen, Stefan Tauner