Apologies for the late update. The design that I posted in the last post was more challenging than I had thought. However I’m happy to announce that my test hardware that I call ‘coreboot test interface board’ (TIB) is now complete. Only some of the software interface part is remaining in the project. So let me share with you a very quick update of last month. Continue reading GSoC (coreboot): Test interface board complete
Tag: BIOS
GSoC (coreboot): Week 5-7 – Redesigning the test-interface-board
In the last blog post I talked about the test-interface-board. There were some concerns about the use of FT232H chip and extra features like voltage and temperature measurement were not required. Keeping in view all the suggestions and improving things on my side I have redesigned the board.
The figure above shows only one target board connected to the test supervision for simplicity. The purple L-block is the test-interface-board. This time, instead of using an integrated flasher I wish to support all existing flashers so I have developed an ICP adapter. An In-Circuit Programming (ICP) adapter contains the firmware flash memory removed from the motherboard and it acts as an electronic change-over switch that connects this flash memory to the motherboard or the programmer as required. It also includes logic-level translation to support as many as possible combinations of programmers and motherboards. The support for programmer voltage is in range 1.2V-5.5V and for motherboard SPI voltage it’s in range 1.65V-3.3V.
As a quick test for VGA initialization I’ve added video detection for Analog video (VGA), DVI and HDMI ports. This checks presence of signals that are only there when video is active. In other words, it checks whether a monitor’s status led would turn green if it’s plugged to the motherboard without actually plugging one. I have prepared schematics, some parts of which are yet to be validated through prototyping. This will all be implemented as an Arduino add-on board (aka Shield) for convenience and the Arduino would act as the controller.
The Serial and Ethernet ports can be connected in the usual way using Serial-to-USB cables, Ethernet cables and hubs. Continue reading GSoC (coreboot): Week 5-7 – Redesigning the test-interface-board
flashrom: Which hardware do you want supported?
flashrom is growing rapidly and we are constantly adding support for new SATA/PATA controllers, network cards, graphics cards, USB devices, JTAG cables, DIY hardware hacks, desktop/server mainboards and even some laptops.
If you own a piece of hardware which has a flash chip and lives in a PC (embedded devices with NAND flash are already covered by other software), and if you want to reflash that piece of hardware, please comment here (with some info on how to reach you) or mail us at flashrom@flashrom.org. We will use this to prioritize support for hardware people are interested in.
Continue reading flashrom: Which hardware do you want supported?
flashrom supports PowerPC and MIPS
You can now use flashrom on PowerPC and MIPS with most programmers. I added the last bit of infrastructure in version 0.9.2-r1111, and we got a few success reports since then. All USB/serial/network drivers work, and quite a few PCI drivers work fine as well.
Added bonus: If your flashrom driver selection does not need direct hardware access (e.g. USB programmers, serial programmers, dummy, …) you can now compile flashrom on all architectures, even those which are not explicitly supported. That feature was added in version 0.9.2-r1116.
This is a big step forward for flashrom which had been x86 centric since the beginning.
Nvidia MCP6x/MCP7x SPI support merged
I merged my Nvidia MCP61/MCP65/MCP67/MCP73/MCP78S/MCP79 SPI support patch a few days ago in version 0.9.2-r1113, but right now flashrom will refuse to erase/write on those chipsets for safety reasons. Details about the patch can be found in my earlier blog post: First successful Nvidia MCP6x/MCP7x SPI access.
Current flashrom is thus well-equipped to handle any x86 mainboard you throw in its way.
RayeR SPIPGM support in flashrom
A few days ago I added flashrom support for the RayeR SPIPGM hardware by Martin Rehak. It is basically one capacitor and a few resistors attached to a classic parallel port cable, and you can use it to reflash SPI chips. Many recent mainboards from MSI, Gigabyte, VIA and other vendors have either removable SPI flash chips or a JSPI/JSPI1/SPI header where you can attach RayeR’s programmer to perform a BIOS recovery. See http://rayer.ic.cz/elektro/spipgm.htm for schematics and instructions.
If you want to test it, compile flashrom version 0.9.2-r1093 or later. RayeR support is enabled by default. To invoke the RayeR driver, run
flashrom -p rayer_spi
First successful Nvidia MCP6x/MCP7x SPI access
Since a few hours, my Nvidia MCP61/MCP65/MCP67/MCP73/MCP78S/MCP79 SPI driver is tested and it works well. Only probing for a flash chip was tested, but still… this means my SPI bitbanging code is correct, and Michael Karcher’s reverse engineered docs are correct, and my implementation of the Nvidia GPIO interface used for bitbanging SPI is correct as well.
This is big news because with this patch flashrom finally has 100% support for all x86 chipsets we saw in the last ten years.
Huge thanks go to Michael Karcher for reverse engineering the interface and writing up cleanroom documentation which I could use for implementing the interface.
Huge thanks to Johannes Sjolund for testing my patch on his hardware although it was completely untested before.
Get the patch here: http://patchwork.coreboot.org/patch/1520/ (click on the “patch” link on that page to get a download).
Continue reading First successful Nvidia MCP6x/MCP7x SPI access
flashrom 0.9.2 released
The flashrom developers are happy to announce the release of flashrom 0.9.2.
flashrom is a utility for reading, writing, erasing and verifying flash ROM chips.
flashrom is designed to update BIOS/EFI/coreboot/firmware/optionROM images on mainboards, network/graphics/storage controller cards, and various programmer devices. It can do so without any special boot procedures and from your normal working environment.
After over nine years of development and constant improvement, we have added support for every BIOS flash ROM technology present on x86 mainboards and every flash ROM chip we ever saw in the wild.
Highlights of flashrom:
Continue reading flashrom 0.9.2 released