[LinuxBIOS] flashrom support for AMD CS5536

[Alan Alexander]

My stripped-bare Linux OS doesn't have the /dev/nvram node - presumably
it needs to be enabled when building the kernel?

It's not a problem though, I've put together a little program for
reading/writing the NVRAM area using the information from lxbios as a
basis. 

One more thing though. I noticed that the flashrom code for the
Pm49fl004/2 chip uses a jedec chip erase sequence for doing erase.
Unfortunately, the data sheet says that this operation is only supported
in "A/A Mux mode". For FWH mode (which my IEI Nano-LX board seems to
use) and LPC mode, this operation isn't supported and you must use a
block erase instead. Do you think it's worth changing the code to
perform the entire chip erase via a sequence of block erases instead -
in order to give better compatibility? 

Many thanks for all the help.

Alan 


Alan Alexander          mailto:alan at icerasemi.com
Software Toolchain Engineering
Icera Inc, 2520 The Quadrant, Aztec west, Bristol BS32 4AQ, UK
Tel. +44 (0)1454 284805 
-----Original Message-----
From: Richard Smith [mailto:smithbone at gmail.com] 
Sent: 27 November 2007 20:51
To: Uwe Hermann
Cc: Darmawan Salihun; Alan Alexander; linuxbios
Subject: Re: [LinuxBIOS] flashrom support for AMD CS5536

Uwe Hermann wrote:
> On Wed, Nov 28, 2007 at 01:15:01AM +0700, Darmawan Salihun wrote:
>> I'm not sure if there is somekind of /dev/cmos in Linux. But
>> IIRC, there is a project that working on such a thing. I
>> just don't know where exactly it is.

/dev/nvram

dd if=/dev/nvram of=nvram.img bs=1 count=114

That rips a copy of the CS5536 nvram.  /dev/nvram skips the actual clock

registers.  So the byte indexes don't exactly line up with the indexes 
you would use via port 0x70/0x71 IO.  Something to note when lining it 
up with the docs.

Edit with a hex editor and flip the of= if= args to write.

-- 
Richard A. Smith
smithbone at gmail.com


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