[flashrom] Sweating by programming SPIs

[Stefan Tauner]

On Thu, 11 Jun 2015 22:09:55 +0200
jackjean <jackjean at vivaldi.net> wrote:

>  
> 
> Good evening all, 
> 
> After heaving sweated for months, I finally call for help at the
> community... 
> 
> My target is to program several SPI chips in order to repare some ASUS
> laptops, which was solved before by purchasing pre-programmed BIOS Chips
> 
> 
> I first tried to access with an SOIC "gripper" clip, directly on the
> chip being soldered on the main board. 
> 
> Facing to a lot of failures (unknown chip), I decided than to work on
> de-soldered chips. 
> 
> This allowed me to extract some dumps on failing and fresh purchased
> SPIs. 
> 
> Now, I have a satisfying database of complete images of BIOS, that I
> expect to use for programming new chips according each need. 
> 
> At that point begin my problem : 
> 
> After a abort during the first trial, I decided to erase my chip, and
> got the following advise : 
> 
> _"C:\Flashrom>flashrom -E -p buspirate_spi:dev=/COM3,spispeed=1M_
> _flashrom v0.9.6.1-r1704 on Windows 6.1 (x86)_
> _flashrom is free software, get the source code at
> http://www.flashrom.org [1]_ 
> 
> _Calibrating delay loop... OK._
> _Found Winbond flash chip "W25Q32.V" (4096 kB, SPI) on buspirate_spi._
> _Erasing and writing flash chip... FAILED at 0x00000800! Expected=0xff,
> Found=0x00, failed byte count from 0x00000000-0x00000fff: 0x600_
> _ERASE FAILED!_
> _Reading current flash chip contents..."_ 
> 
> Than I decided to purchase a DIP to SOIC adaptor in order to eliminate
> my doubts on the connection by gripper. Now the chips I use are soldered
> ... 
> 
> I tried to write again the BIOS image and got the following after a very
> long time of writing operation (more than one hour) and using the
> following command : 
> 
> _"flashrom -w flash.bin -VVV -p buspirate_spi:dev=/COM3,spispeed=1M"_ 
> 
> The reslult is : 
> 
> _"Your flash chip is in an unknown state._
> _Please report this on IRC at chat.freenode.net (channel #flashrom) or_
> _mail flashrom at flashrom.org, thanks!_
> _buspirate_sendrecv: write 1, read 0 Sending 0x00_
> _buspirate_sendrecv: write 0, read 4 , receiving 0x42 0x42 0x49 0x4f_
> _buspirate_sendrecv: write 0, read 1 , receiving 0x31_
> _Raw bitbang mode version 1_
> _buspirate_sendrecv: write 1, read 0 Sending 0x0f_
> _Bus Pirate shutdown completed."_ 
> 
> Considering than I took every possible care on the connection between
> Buspirate and SPI, and having a satisfying reading result (dumps are
> checked with Hex Editor and look OK), I am stucked at that point... 
> 
> I would appreciate any support from you. 
> 

Hi,

you should have come here earlier probably :)
Regarding your initial problems there are some hints at
http://flashrom.org/ISP

The failed erases and probably also the cause of the unknown state at
the end comes from unconnected an !WP and/or !HOLD pin.
See http://flashrom.org/Bus_Pirate for more details on these
connections.

If that does not help please post the write.log file generated by:
flashrom -w flash.bin -p buspirate_spi:dev=/COM3,spispeed=1M -o write.log
-- 
Kind regards/Mit freundlichen Grüßen, Stefan Tauner