[flashrom] Emulating a flash chip for a real device
Stefan Tauner
stefan.tauner at student.tuwien.ac.at
Tue Mar 19 10:30:12 CET 2013
On Sun, 17 Mar 2013 07:15:39 +1000
Adam Nielsen <a.nielsen at shikadi.net> wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I have just purchased a network-connected video camera which runs Linux, and I
> would like to experiment with creating my own firmware for it. Since I am
> likely to brick the device a few times with this, I'd like to come up with a
> way of recovering it before I start.
Very thoughtful ;)
> The firmware (bootloader + kernel) is stored inside a 4MB SPI flash chip
> supported by flashrom, however it is soldered onto the board, so presumably to
> reflash it I will have to desolder at least one of the pins to avoid the
> flashrom commands getting tangled up with those sent by the device itself when
> reading the chip.
Please take a look at http://flashrom.org/ISP
> However I was thinking that instead of reflashing the entire chip every time
> something goes wrong, it would be a lot easier if I could produce my firmware
> image as a 4MB file, and emulate the chip so that the file is accessed
> directly every time the camera tries to read from the flash chip.
>
> I see flashrom can already emulate some chips with the 'dummy' programmer, and
> as most (all?) programmers can both read and write data I am wondering whether
> it is possible to set flashrom up as a virtual flash chip connected to a real
> circuit, responding to read and write commands received from other chips in
> the device.
The emulation in the "dummy" programmer is completely virtual which
allows trivially to do what it does. "Switching" the direction of
communication on hardware is fundamentally different - just doing reads
instead of writes and vice versa is not enough because of a number of
aspects I can not explain in a simple email (clock, chip select and all
the other tiny little details of digital communication :)
There are special devices that are able to emulate flash chips, but they
are expensive (500 eur range). One could implement such a device using
an FPGA but I am not aware of any free projects doing so...
> I plan to use a Bus Pirate as a programmer, so if I remove the flash chip and
> connect the Bus Pirate to the circuit instead, being able to edit a file and
> reset the device without actually reflashing anything would be a huge time saver.
>
> If this isn't currently possible, would it be a big job to add support for it?
It is just not possible with the hardware used to write flash chips and
requires a completely new device.
--
Kind regards/Mit freundlichen Grüßen, Stefan Tauner
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