[LinuxBIOS] cant detect bios with flash software {Scanned}

[Stefan Reinauer]

* bios at lists.actweb.info <bios at lists.actweb.info> [060630 19:42]:
> EFST
> F498002UA     90N
> AZB1MFR29     0303
 
Good! This helps. The part is an EFST F49B002UA:
http://www.esmt.com.tw/DB/manager/upload/F49B002UA.pdf

> Is there a way to get the bios number from inside linux? 

Yes. each flash chip has an identification sequence. Unfortunately there
are different such sequences for different manufacturers. But all in all
each flash chip has one byte vendor id and one byte device id.

> Also, does this mean that there isnt anyway to get linuxbios working
> on my board? or is it just a case of writing a good image to the RD1
> to get it working? 

You can just write to the chip on the bios savior and leave the EFST
alone (it has a good working bios image, right?) - Actually that is
probably the best way to start.

> the last time i used anything like this was when
> you had a small memory chip with built in battery that had an RTC in
> the upper 8 address bytes, and the rest was standard SRAM :)
 
The programming got a lot easier since then. The hardware a lot more
complex. :-)

> Im not sure what u mean by verifing that the image starts 25 a6??? are
> you talking about an image file taken from the BIOS using VIAs flash
> utility?
 
I thought that might be the vendor and device id. In fact it is 8c and
00, as it is a 256kb part
 
Stefan