[LinuxBIOS] Flashrom and AM29LV040B flash chip

[Peter Stuge]

On Sun, Mar 18, 2007 at 05:46:34PM +0200, Priit Laes wrote:
> How well does Flashrom work with AM29LV040B [1] flash chip?

It should work out of the box, if not it will be trivial to add.


> I took apart my old Dell Latitude C600 laptop with thoughts that I could
> maybe get it working with LinuxBIOS, but well, chip itself is soldered
> on the motherboard [2] (16 pins inside 8 millimeters) so I would first
> have to figure out how to implement the hotswapping.

Emulation Technology have a TSOP prototyping socket that you could
solder on to the board instead of the TSOP chip. Then have a few TSOP
chips to swap between.

http://www.emulation.com/catalog/off-the-shelf_solutions/sockets/tsop/

Note that these sockets are rated for a minimum of 50 insert/remove
cycles.


> Also, does anyone have ideas where to order these flash chips
> (PLCC) in Europe, preferably Finland?

On the picture is a TSOP chip. Either way, I think Farnell or maybe
Avnet are good sources for single quantity chips.


> [2] http://plaes.org/files/2007-Q1/2007-03-18-latitude-c600-bios.jpg

There are pads for a PLCC chip on the board. PLCC is much easier to
work with so I would go for that instead of the TSOP. (Maybe that was
your thought too.) You would have to scrape off the green lacquer to
expose the pads but if done carefully with a steady hand and a sharp
knife (or fibre glass brush) that's fairly easy.


//Peter