Flashrom: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 16:34, 30 October 2007

Flashrom is a utility which can be used to detect, read, or write BIOS chips (DIP, PLCC, SPI).

Supported devices

Note: There are probably some flash ROM chips which are compatible to the ones listed below.

Flash chips

Vendor	Flash part	Status
AMD	AM-29F040B	OK
AMD	AM-29F016D	OK
ASD	AE49F2008	OK
Atmel	AT-29C040A	OK
Atmel	AT-29C020	OK
EMST	F49B002UA	OK
Fujitsu	MBM29F400TC	OK⁵
Intel®(Firmware Hub)	82802AB	OK
Intel®(Firmware Hub)	82802AC	OK
M-Systems	MD-2802	OK¹
MX	MX-29F002	OK
PMC	PMC-49FL002	OK
PMC	PMC-49FL004	OK
Sharp	LHF-00L04	OK
SST	SST-29EE020A	OK
SST	SST-28SF040A	OK
SST	SST-39SF010A	OK
SST	SST-39SF020A	OK
SST	SST-39SF040	OK
SST	SST-39VF020	OK
SST	SST-49LF040B	OK
SST	SST-49LF040	OK
SST	SST-49LF020A	OK
SST	SST-49LF080A	OK
SST	SST-49LF002A/B	OK
SST	SST-49LF003A/B	OK
SST	SST-49LF004A/B	OK
SST	SST-49LF008A	OK
SST	SST-49LF004C	OK
SST	SST-49LF008C	OK
SST	SST-49LF016C	OK
SST	SST-49LF160C	OK

Flash chips (cont'd)

Vendor	Flash part	Status
ST	ST-M50FLW040A	OK⁴
ST	ST-M50FLW040B	OK⁴
ST	ST-M50FLW080A	OK⁴
ST	ST-M50FLW080B	OK⁴
ST	ST-M50FW040	OK⁴
ST	ST-M50FW080	OK⁴
ST	ST-M50FW016	OK⁴
ST	ST-M50LPW116	OK⁴
ST	ST-M29F002B	OK
ST	ST-M29F002T	OK
ST	ST-M29F002NT	OK
ST	ST-M29F400BT	OK
ST	ST-M29F040B	OK
ST	ST-M29W010B	OK⁴
ST	ST-M29W040B	OK⁴
SyncMOS	S29C51001T/B	OK⁴
SyncMOS	S29C51002T/B	OK
SyncMOS	S29C51004T/B	OK⁴
SyncMOS	S29C31004T	OK⁴
Winbond™	W29C011	OK
Winbond™	W29C020C	OK
Winbond™	W29C040P	OK
Winbond™	W29EE011	OK
Winbond™	W49F002U	OK
Winbond™	W49V002A	OK
Winbond™	W49V002FA	OK
Winbond™	W39V040FA	OK
Winbond™	W39V040A	OK
Winbond™	W39V040B	OK
Winbond™	W39V080A	OK

Southbridges

Vendor	Southbridge	Status
ALi	M1533	OK
AMD	Geode™ CS5530/CS5530A	OK
AMD	Geode™ SC1100	?
AMD	AMD-8111	OK
ATI	SB400	?
Broadcom	HT-1000	OK
Intel®	ICH	OK²
Intel®	PIIX4/PIIX4E/PIIX4M	OK
Intel®	440MX	OK
NVIDIA	CK804	OK
NVIDIA	MCP51	?
NVIDIA	MCP55	OK
SiS	630	?
SiS	5595	?
VIA	CX700	OK
VIA	VT8231	?
VIA	VT8235	?
VIA	VT8237	?
VIA	VT82C686	?

¹ Unsupported, disabled by default.
² This includes the ICH, ICH0, ICH2, ICH2-M, ICH3-S, ICH3-M, ICH4/ICH4-L, ICH4-M, ICH5/ICH5R, ICH6/ICH6R, ICH6-M, ICH7DH, ICH7/ICH7R, ICH7M, ICH7MDH, ICH8/ICH8R, ICH8DH, and ICH8DO chipsets. ICH2: Identifying and reading chips seems to work, but there are reports that writing may not work on some mainboards.
⁴ Untested, but should work.
⁵ Only reading the chip, but not writing to it has been tested. Both is expected to work, though.

Supported mainboards

This is a list of mainboards where we have verified that they either do or do not need any special initialization to make flashrom work (given flashrom supports the respective southbridge and ROM chip), or that they do not yet work at all. If they do not work, support may or may not be added later.

Mainboards which don't appear in the list may or may not work (we don't know, someone has to give it a try). Please report any further verified mainboards on the mailinglist or add them here directly.

Known-good

Vendor	Mainboard	Status
Advantech	PCM-5820	OK
ASI	MB-5BLMP¹	OK
ASUS	A8NE-FM/S	OK
ASUS	A8N-SLI Premium	OK
ASUS	M2A-VM	OK⁵
ASUS	P2B	OK
ASUS	P2B-F	OK
BCOM	WinNET100⁶	OK
GIGABYTE	GA-6BXC	OK
Tyan	S1846	OK
Tyan	S2881	OK
Tyan	S2882	OK

Known-good (but special setup required)

Vendor	Mainboard	Required option	Status
agámi	Aruma/AIS6000	-m AGAMI:ARUMA	OK
ASUS	A7V400-MX	—	OK
ASUS	A7V8X-MX	—	OK
ASUS	A8V-E SE	—	OK⁷
ASUS	P5A	-m asus:p5a	OK
EPoX	EP-BX3	-m epox:ep-bx3	OK
IBM	x3455	-m ibm:x3455	OK
GIGABYTE	GA-M57SLI-S4	-m gigabyte:m57sli	SEMI-SUPPORTED³
GIGABYTE	GA-M61P-S3	-m gigabyte:m61p	OK
IWILL	DK8-HTX	-m iwill:dk8_htx	OK
MSI	K8N Neo3	-m msi:k8n-neo3	OK
Tyan	S2498 (Tomcat K7M)	—	OK
VIA	EPIA-M	—	OK²
VIA	EPIA-MII	—	OK²

Known-bad

Vendor	Mainboard	Status
ASUS	MEW-VM	No
Biostar	M6TBA	No
MSI	MS-7260 (K9N Neo)	SEMI-SUPPORTED⁴

¹ Used in the IGEL WinNET III thin client.
² Might also work for other CLE266 based EPIAs.
³ Flashrom works great when booted with the proprietary BIOS. Once booted in LinuxBIOS, it does not work reliably. See bug #87.
⁴ Interestingly flashrom does not work when the vendor BIOS is booted, but it does work flawlessly when the machine is booted with LinuxBIOS.
⁵ See http://www.linuxbios.org/pipermail/linuxbios/2007-September/025202.html.
⁶ Used in the IGEL-316 thin client.
⁷ See http://www.linuxbios.org/pipermail/linuxbios/2007-October/026406.html.

Installation

Requirements

Flashrom requires the pciutils and zlib and the respective development packages in order to be built.

In Debian unstable these development packages are called pciutils-dev and zlib1g-dev. Most other distributions call them pciutils-devel and zlib-devel.

Manual Installation

$ svn co svn://linuxbios.org/repos/trunk/util/flashrom
$ cd flashrom
$ make
$ sudo make install

Debian

$ sudo aptitude install flashrom

Fedora

$ sudo yum install flashrom

Mandriva

$ urpmi flashrom

Usage

Detect whether flashrom knows about your chipset/mainboard/BIOS chip:

$ flashrom

Read the current BIOS image into a file:

$ flashrom -r backup.bin

Write a BIOS image (proprietary or LinuxBIOS) on the ROM chip:

$ flashrom -wv newbios.bin

WARNING: This will overwrite your current BIOS! Make sure you know what you're doing!

For more documentation please see the flashrom README or the manpage.

@@ Line 16: / Line 16: @@
 ! align="left" | Status
-|- bgcolor="#dddddd" valign="top"
+|- bgcolor="#eeeeee" valign="top"
 | AMD
 | AM-29F040B
 | style="background:lime" | OK
-|- bgcolor="#dddddd" valign="top"
+|- bgcolor="#eeeeee" valign="top"
 | AMD
 | AM-29F016D
 | style="background:lime" | OK
-|- bgcolor="#eeeeee" valign="top"
+|- bgcolor="#dddddd" valign="top"
 | ASD
 | AE49F2008
 | style="background:lime" | OK
-|- bgcolor="#dddddd" valign="top"
+|- bgcolor="#eeeeee" valign="top"
 | Atmel
 | AT-29C040A
 | style="background:lime" | OK
-|- bgcolor="#dddddd" valign="top"
+|- bgcolor="#eeeeee" valign="top"
 | Atmel
 | AT-29C020
 | style="background:lime" | OK
-|- bgcolor="#eeeeee" valign="top"
+|- bgcolor="#dddddd" valign="top"
 | EMST
 | F49B002UA
 | style="background:lime" | OK
+|- bgcolor="#eeeeee" valign="top"
+| Fujitsu
+| MBM29F400TC
+| style="background:lime" | OK<sup>5</sup>
 |- bgcolor="#dddddd" valign="top"
 | Intel&reg;(Firmware Hub)
@@ Line 315: / Line 319: @@
 | Intel&reg;&nbsp;
 | PIIX4/PIIX4E/PIIX4M
+| style="background:lime" | OK
+|- bgcolor="#eeeeee" valign="top"
+| Intel&reg;&nbsp;
+| 440MX
 | style="background:lime" | OK
 |- bgcolor="#dddddd" valign="top"
@@ Line 364: / Line 372: @@
 <sup>2</sup> This includes the ICH, ICH0, ICH2, ICH2-M, ICH3-S, ICH3-M, ICH4/ICH4-L, ICH4-M, ICH5/ICH5R, ICH6/ICH6R, ICH6-M, ICH7DH, ICH7/ICH7R, ICH7M, ICH7MDH, ICH8/ICH8R, ICH8DH, and ICH8DO chipsets. ICH2: Identifying and reading chips seems to work, but there are [http://tracker.linuxbios.org/trac/LinuxBIOS/ticket/7 reports] that writing may not work on some mainboards.<br />
 <sup>4</sup> Untested, but should work.<br />
+<sup>5</sup> Only reading the chip, but not ''writing'' to it has been tested. Both is expected to work, though.<br />
 </small>