Hi, I finally managed to flash the t500.
I case that can help some newcomer in the future. I'm explaining here how I managed to get it flashed. As it turned out my PSU was not properly delivering 3.3V, unplugged I was mesuring 3.37V but once plugged to the macronix chip, the tension was only 2.85V. So what I did was to use port 3 of the beaglebone to power the chip during flashing. It turns out the beaglebone is more reliable when it comes to the stability of tension... But I still continued to use the ground from the PSU (connected to port 2 of BB). From there there was some improvement because there was only one bit of error. But still no "VERIFIED" So I plugged the WP pin (pin 9 of the chip) to port 4 of the beaglebone. This is the Write protection pin. If connected to 3.3V this allows all the chip to be written. And then I was able to flash the chip in one try at spispeed=512. To sum up here is the final connection that worked : === ethernet jack and VGA port ==== 4 (3.3V BB) - - 21 1 - - 17 NC - - NC NC - - NC NC - - NC NC - - NC 18 - - 3 (3.3V from BB) 22 - - NC - this is pin 1 on the flash chip === SATA port === And port 2 of the BB connected to the ground (PSU for example). Hoping that may help future newcomers that face similar problem and find no information online. Cheers. Le Sun, 3 Apr 2016 13:12:44 +0200, Louis Delmas <[email protected]> a écrit : > Hi, > > I have been trying for numerous times to flash a T500 without success, > I describe here my setup and what I already tried, if some of you have > ideas I would be glad to try them because I am getting annoyed with > this chip that refuses to get flashed ... > > My setup : > -I use the setup proposed in the Libreboot documentation (BBB + PSU) > -I tried flashrom included in libreboot_utils and also compiled it > from git. > -My cables are short (10cm) and coax+twisted (a link is proposed on > Libreboot documentation) > -this setup was able to flash on first try a Winbond "W25X64" on a > x200 -this setup is able to get reproducible reads at spispeed=256, > 512 and 1024 . For some reason that does not work with 128... > > The system I want to flash > -T500 with a Macronix "MX25L6405D" > -The thinkpad bios was password locked but as flashing erases all the > chip I thought this would not be a problem. > > What I've tried so far > -"Basic" flash as described in the Libreboot Doc (spispeed 256, 512, > 1024) numerous times (close to 20 times for each speed) > -Connecting pin 1 and 9 of the chip to 3.3V (I found the libreboot doc > is not very clear on that subject) I looked at the MX24L6405D > factsheet to understand a little bit more. As I understand the need > to connect WP to 3.3V I don't understand the role of HOLD in that > case. > > All of this does not work and I get **always** the same error > message : "Erase/write done. > Verifying flash... FAILED at 0x00000000! Expected=0x08, > Found=0x5a, ..." failed byte count changes every time. > > I feel I've exhausted all the possible ideas of improvements now and > I'm starting to get annoyed by this... If somebody can help that > would be great.... > > cheers > > Louis > -- GPG Public key rsa4096/0x1D567BC42DF1E1EA Fingerprint = 9EE9 F130 F7AE 076D D63B 5AF8 1D56 7BC4 2DF1 E1EA
