Flashrom

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Flashrom is a utility written for LinuxBIOS and maintained in the LinuxBIOS Subversion repository. It can be used to detect BIOS chips (DIP, PLCC), read their contents and write new contents on the chips ("flashing").

Supported devices

Note: The LinuxBIOSv1 version of Flashrom ("flash_and_burn") only supported a very small number of devices. Always use the latest Flashrom version from LinuxBIOSv2! There are some compatible chips out to the below list.

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
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
ST	ST-M29F002B	OK
ST	ST-M29F002T	OK
ST	ST-M29F002NT	OK
ST	ST-M29F400BT	OK
ST	ST-M29F040B	OK
SyncMOS	S29C51001T/B	OK⁴
SyncMOS	S29C51002T/B	OK
SyncMOS	S29C51004T/B	OK⁴
SyncMOS	S29C31004T	OK⁴
Winbond™	W29C011	OK
Winbond™	W29C020C	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®	ICH²	OK³
Intel®	PIIX4/PIIX4E/PIIX4M	OK
NVIDIA	CK804	OK
NVIDIA	MCP51	?
NVIDIA	MCP55	OK
SiS	630	?
SiS	5595	?
VIA	CX700	OK
VIA	VT8231	?
VIA	VT8235	?
VIA	VT8237	?
VIA	VT82C686	?

Mainboards which need special setup

Vendor	Mainboard	Required option	Status
agámi	Aruma/AIS6000	-m AGAMI:ARUMA	OK
ASUS	A7V400-MX	—	OK
ASUS	A7V8X-MX	—	OK
ASUS	P5A	-m asus:p5a	OK
IBM	x3455	-m ibm:x3455	OK
IWILL	DK8-HTX	-m iwill:dk8_htx	OK
VIA	EPIA-M	—	OK⁵
VIA	EPIA-MII	—	OK⁵

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.
³ 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 Might also work for other CLE266 based EPIAs.

Installation

Requirements

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

In Debian unstable the respective packages are called pciutils-dev and zlib1g-dev.

Manual Installation

$ svn co svn://linuxbios.org/repos/trunk/LinuxBIOSv2 
$ cd LinuxBIOSv2/util/flashrom
$ make
$ sudo make install

Or (as root):

# make install

Debian

$ sudo apt-get install flashrom