[LinuxBIOS] LinuxBIOS 'flashrom' on Geode LX + CS5536

[Martin-Éric Racine]

Thank you for your quick reply!

On 12/10/07, Tom Sylla <tsylla at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Dec 9, 2007 4:15 PM, Martin-Éric Racine <q-funk at iki.fi> wrote:
> > As far as I can tell, 'flashrom' would need to read some register
> > (DIVIL_BALLS - see AMD document 3328G_cs5536_db.pdf page 365) to learn
> > what is the primary boot device configured by the bootstrap resistors
> > and then try to find the NOR chip used for storing the BIOS there at
> > that location.
>
> It is not necessarily *required* for flashrom to do that. The
> PRI_BOOT_LOC bits of that MSR say where the transactions go, that is
> all. If they are set to 0'b10, transactions above 0xf0000000 go to the
> flash controller. When flashrom does the ID sequence, things should
> just work.

Unfortunately, they don't.

> One complication is that the flash controller has a "write enable" bit
> for each of its chip selects. You will find them in the "NOR Flash
> Control" MSR. If writes are not enabled, the ID won't even work. (LB
> flashrom only comprehends the CPU RCONF write protection disabling,
> and does not comprehend the flash controller write enables)

Would this be difficult to implement?
It seems likely that this is the only show stopper left.

> If you are having some sort of specific problem, please give some
> detail. My guess is that no ROM is identified on your flash interface
> platform, but it does get detected on the LPC platform.

Neither work out of the box.

Right now, we're forced to use a deprecated hack from AMD called
gx_util.c (a non-free kernel module whose only purpose is to play with
the MSR) to flip the register. We even ended up having to hack a
slightly different version of this module to work with the new
platform featuring the NOR on the LPC hub.

Best Regards,
-- 
Martin-Éric Racine
http://q-funk.iki.fi