Hi Mark, thanks for the log and the explanation. This was indeed helpful.
May I suggest you take a look at the nvramtool utility from the coreboot project? It works fine even on normal BIOS (needs to be run as root, though). http://www.coreboot.org/Nvramtool I used nvramtool in the past to dump all 256 bytes of NVRAM. For a hexdump, try this: # nvramtool -x If this gets you the same result as SRCMOS.EXE, you could throw the DOS utility away. The interesting parameters are: -b OUTPUT_FILE: Dump CMOS memory contents to file. -B INPUT_FILE: Write file contents to CMOS memory. -x: Show hex dump of CMOS memory. -X DUMPFILE: Show hex dump of CMOS dumpfile. Regards, Carl-Daniel On 02.11.2015 11:06, Rowlinson Mark wrote: > Hi Carl-Daniel, > I've attached the logfile output as requested. > The SRCMOS .EXE utility that comes on the BIOS update image saves 256 bytes > of data. The older versions has 128 bytes of data and the remainder was all > 00x. The last version has data within the last 128 bytes and that makes all > the difference. > Whether the utility only processed the first 128 bytes initially and was > corrected to save/restore the extra 128 bytes I don't know but it certainly > does the trick now. > It is a DOS based utility and I've been able to configure a FreeDOS image > under GRUB so that it will boot it once to set the BIOS settings I need and > then boot back to the Linux OS. > Getting the settings out was a bit of a chore as I had to hex dump them to > the screen so I could take a picture (and then type them in) as the image > can't be updated and has no access to any other devices. Running the utility > from a USB device is no help either as the moment I disable USB in the BIOS I > can't access the utility to write the settings to a file. > Best Regards, > Mark Rowlinson, Principal Engineer, Unix Support > MISGB Implementation Distributed > > Fujitsu > > > From: Carl-Daniel Hailfinger [mailto:[email protected]] > Sent: 29 October 2015 00:37 > To: Rowlinson Mark <[email protected]>; [email protected] > Subject: Re: [flashrom] Flash chip/chipset not found > > > Hi Mark, > > would it be possible for you to generate a log file using the additional > parameter --output logfile.txt when doing a read of the flash chip, then send > that log file to us? > > That would help us to finally merge support for the VT8251 chipset in your > point-of-sale IBM/Toshiba AnyPlace Kiosk Model 48xx series. We have a strict > rule that flashrom must be 100% reliable and thus we keep log files for any > newly supported/tested chipset around for reference. Your log file would be > used as reference for VT8251. > > That said, it would be very interesting to know where the settings are > actually stored. Have you looked into the top 128 bytes of NVRAM? Maybe there > is another flash chip? Is there any way to trace what the save/restore tool > does (i.e. does it run on Linux)? > > Regards, > Carl-Daniel > > > > > > On 28.10.2015 23:25, Rowlinson Mark wrote: > >> Hi Carl-Daniel, >> >> That change does allow the chipset to be recognised and it will write out >> the ROM. It seems to be the BIOS code only (no settings) as it doesn't >> change if I change any settings within the BIOS. >> >> I've been directed to a save/restore utility that comes on the BIOS update >> image and it seems the last version actually accesses the data I'm >> interested in so I'm investigating this route at the moment. >> >> Best Regards, >> Mark Rowlinson >> -----Original Message----- >> >> From: Carl-Daniel Hailfinger >> [mailto:[email protected]] >> Sent: 24 October 2015 09:22 >> To: Rowlinson Mark >> <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>>; >> [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> >> >> Subject: Re: [flashrom] Flash chip/chipset not found >> >> Hi Mark, >> >> this is a VIA VT8251 PCI to ISA Bridge you're using. >> >> I think Stefan Tauner (in CC) already was discussing something similar here: >> http://www.flashrom.org/pipermail/flashrom/2012-July/009552.html >> That email even has a patch attached. >> On 22.10.2015 22:24, Rowlinson Mark wrote: >>> Thanks for the swift response, I have attached output from the command >>> requested. >>> >>> The device in question is an IBM (now Toshiba) AnyPlace Kiosk Model >>> 4838-310. The models we have are a mixture of 4838-310 and 4838-330 and >>> support documentation refers to them as 4838-3xx. >> Heh, would be fun to add this to our tests. >> >> Regards, >> Carl-Daniel _______________________________________________ flashrom mailing list [email protected] http://www.flashrom.org/mailman/listinfo/flashrom
