[flashrom] trouble flashing EN25S64 on Lenovo N21 chromebook

[Stefan Tauner]

On Sun, 4 Oct 2015 18:22:35 -0500
Kyle Stanevich <kstanevich at imsa.edu> wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> I am still having trouble flashing the EN25S64 chip on my Lenovo N21
> chromebook. I have connected a raspberry pi to the EN25S64 on the Lenovo
> N21 motherboard chip via this clip (
> http://www.amazon.com/Qunqi-Soic8-Flash-Clips-Programmer/dp/B014IXR9RG). On
> the raspberry pi (which is running raspbian) I run the command "sudo
> ./flashrom -VVV -p linux_spi:dev=/dev/spidev0.0 -w ~/Downloads/bios.bin". I
> have removed the write protect screw, but I don't think that matters
> because I am connecting to the chip directly.
> 
> I have tried to compile google's (chromiumos') version of flashrom, but I
> could not get it to compile due to many errors. Therefore, I am using the
> latest version of flashrom which compiles fine.
> 
> It seams to me that the problem is there is something not working correctly
> writing/erasing/reading to the chip. Erase functions 1 through 3 all fail
> when using the command shown above. It hangs up on erase function 2 for a
> very long time. I had to run it overnight until erase function 2 failed. I
> have tried running the same command again, and it is currently still stuck
> at "Trying erase function 2... 0x000000-0x7fffff:E". It has been stuck at
> this line for 16 hours, with the raspberry pi at 100% cpu usage the entire
> time.
> 
> The line "This flash part has status UNTESTED for operations: PROBE READ
> ERASE WRITE" indicates to me that this chip has not yet been tested. I
> would like to help out with testing for this chip since I have one and have
> the hardware required to flash it. What can I do to help out?

Hi,

usually even untested SPI flash chips work just fine. They are all
pretty similar and we use the same source code for them apart from tiny
bits like the actual ID. Thus I don't believe there is anything wrong
with the code but your hardware setup. Take a look at
http://flashrom.org/RaspberryPi especially the note under the pin
table. I presume you did not connect all input pins of the flash chip...

Also, see http://flashrom.org/ISP if that was not the issue.

The long erases could also come from that, but other causes like kernel
or flashrom bugs are theoretically possible as well (although unlikely
IMO).

-- 
Kind regards/Mit freundlichen Grüßen, Stefan Tauner