[flashrom] Thinkpad T420

[Ivan Ivanov]

Sorry for late reply. Yes, it looks like your connection is bad.
Try using the shorter wires, and hopefully of a good quality
( e.g. pure copper wires could be 1.5 longer than the cheap aluminium wires
and still have the same conductivity given the same internal thickness )

You have mentioned that you have updated the Bus Pirate firmware.
To what version did you upgrade? I always recommend upgrading
to the latest Bus Pirate community firmware (the old official one is dead)
You could obtain it here - https://github.com/BusPirate/Bus_Pirate

Alternatively, you may try a $3 very cheap CH341A USB programmer,
which is also supported by flashrom project and has a much simpler hardware,
i.e. it does not have the internal firmware, just a tiny EEPROM of 20
or 32 bytes size +
8 bit CFG register. The board of CH341A usb programmer is small and
extremely simple,
and the simplicity could be a key to success

Best regards,
Ivan

2018-03-17 14:31 GMT+03:00  <aadu at airmail.cc>:
>
> I apologise if I should write to flashrom mailing list instead and not you
> directly.
>
> It was night when I wrote that message and I was tired. Bit more of what I
> was doing.
>
> I was trying to do external flashing following instructions from coreboot
> wiki.
> I used command "sudo flashrom -p buspirate_spi:dev=/dev/ttyUSB0 -r
> filename", and I got:
> Calibrating delay loop... OK.
> Found Generic flash chip "unknown SPI chip (RDID)" (0 kB, SPI) on
> buspirate_spi.
> ===
> This flash part has status NOT WORKING for operations: PROBE READ ERASE
> WRITE
> The test status of this chip may have been updated in the latest development
> version of flashrom. If you are running the latest development version,
> please email a report to flashrom at flashrom.org if any of the above
> operations
> work correctly for you with this flash part. Please include the flashrom
> output with the additional -V option for all operations you tested (-V, -Vr,
> -VE, -Vw), and mention which mainboard or programmer you tested.
> Please mention your board in the subject line. Thanks for your help!
> Read is not working on this chip. Aborting.
>
> Was that because it had bad connection or am I doing something really
> stupid?
> Then I used "flashrom -L" and it showed that T420 support was marked as
> "BAD".
> I bought Bus Pirate v3b and Pomona 5250 SOIC test clip. Have updated the Bus
> Pirate firmware.
>
> Aadu
>