[flashrom] Support for intel card eeproms

[Ricardo Ribalda Delgado]

Hello Stefan,

Thank you very much for your detailed reply.

After reading out the code I have decided to use the opaque register interface.

I have send a patch for review. It works much faster than eeupdate :)

The only problem that I have encounter so far is that the card
re-reads the eeprom after a powercycle, a reboot is not enough... But
I am researching a bit how to avoid that.

Thanks for your help

On Wed, Sep 4, 2013 at 9:46 PM, Stefan Tauner
<stefan.tauner at student.tuwien.ac.at> wrote:
> On Wed, 4 Sep 2013 18:47:19 +0200
> Ricardo Ribalda Delgado <ricardo.ribalda at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Hello
>>
>> We are building a set of cameras with intel 82580 Gigabit chipset.
>>
>> Instead of using the intel eeupdate tool to init the card and the mac I
>> plan to use flashrom.
>>
>> The eeprom is accessed with something similar to spi, but AFAIK it does not
>> follow the jedec standard.
>>
>> To probe it, there are some bits on the network card that I can use, that
>> will tell me if the chip is there and the size.
>>
>> I havent digged too much into the code, but I believe that I have to make a
>> new chip and a new programmer.
>>
>> Before starting the work I would like to know if there is something similar
>> on flashrom that I can use as a example, and if you are interested on such
>> a patch.
>
> There is 0 code for EEPROMs in flashrom yet and we do not plan to work
> actively on supporting them, but for your approach adding two files, one
> for the programmer and one for the chip might be a good start :)
> In the past support for single chips or chip families converged into
> files with generic functions that support a wide range of different
> manufacturers, so there is probably no exact template for what you need
> to do regarding the chip, but that shouldnt be a big issue, just
> implement the needed functions in a new file, hook it up in
> chipdrivers.h and add a new entry to flashchips.c.
>
> The programmer code will be harder to get right without understanding
> flashrom's architecture, but maybe you can use Carl-Daniel's script
> or at least be inspired by it:
> http://patchwork.coreboot.org/patch/3836/
> Alternatively you could take one of the two existing intel nic drivers
> and just change it where needed. That would not lead to a mergeable
> patch but might be easier for you (OTOH you would miss to see some
> implementation details of a new programmer that are under the hood, for
> example where it needs to be hooked up). I am not sure if we would
> merge an EEPROM driver anyway, so getting something that works for you
> should be priority. There might be pre-existing alternatives for what
> you want... the Intel cards are very widespread and eeupdate is a PITA
> AFAIK, but I have never looked for a linux application to replace
> eeupdate...
>
> HTH for now. I am looking forward to see any results.
> --
> Kind regards/Mit freundlichen Grüßen, Stefan Tauner



-- 
Ricardo Ribalda