[LinuxBIOS] In Circuit Flash BIOS Emulator and Programmer

Bari Ari bari at onelabs.com
Wed Mar 21 22:40:45 CET 2007


Here's what I am proposing to build:

In Circuit Flash Emulator and Programmer

This will use the Xilinx Spartan-3E Starter Kit (HW-SPAR3E-SK-US) Xilinx 
Development Boards:

http://www.xilinx.com/xlnx/xebiz/designResources/ip_product_details.jsp?key=HW-SPAR3E-SK-US&sGlobalNavPick=&sSecondaryNavPick=

The Xilinx development boards are only $150 and are available worldwide.

It will feature:

10/100 Ethernet

JTAG

USB

9-pin RS-232 Serial Port

64 MByte DDR SDRAM

128 Mbit Parallel Flash

16 Mbit SPI Flash

16 character - 2 Line LCD

Board schematics may be fond here:
http://www.xilinx.com/bvdocs/ipcenter/block_diagram/S3E_Starter_D_External_sch.pdf

It will interface to the mainboard via an adapter cable that will plug 
into a mainboard Flash ROM socket or onto the pins of a soldered in 
place Flash device. It may be used to program a Flash device or emulate 
a flash device in circuit.

This device will replace the need for the out of production BiosSaver. 
The BIOS ROM emulator feature will also help speed development of a 
LinuxBIOS port since the developer will no longer have to wait for 
either swapping Flash devices or for lengthy Flash programming cycles.

The design, specifications and BOM for the adapter cables will be posted 
on the LinuxBIOS site for all to freely use and build.

Target devices will initially be SPI Flash. LPC and parallel Flash may 
also be supported if there is enough interest.

The design will also allow for expansion into performing as a 
multi-channel logic analyzer with a JAVA client.

-Bari





More information about the coreboot mailing list