hello! i'm new to the list and my first post will tell something about adding the second bios chip to that board.
first of all some informations on my mainboard, because i haven't read this informations on the mailinglist until now. i always read about SST25LF040A and MX25L4005A chips which are used for bios on that mainboard. my mainboard which is also revision 2.0 has a different bios chip, which a device from winbond called 25X40VSIG. here's the link to the datasheet of this chip: www.winbond-usa.com/products/Nexflash/pdfs/datasheets/W25X10_20_40_80g.pdf this is just a statement, that there are also boards with that bios-chips out there. linuxbios will not be tested by me on the 25X40VSIG chip, because i want to remain that chip in it's original state. i've got two MX25L4005A chips, and i *want* to test linuxbios on my mainboard. so yesterday i bought some soldering equipment, and the things i need to do the job. Peter Stuge has posted an introduction to add another chip to the second "bios-port" on the mainboard (http://linuxbios.org/pipermail/linuxbios/2007-September/024395.html; http://stuge.se/lb/m57sli/). after studing the datasheet's of the chips, i was certain that it'll be correct what he told just a few weeks before. what you'll need to get the stuff working: * 2 resistors, i took 100k ohm with 0.25Watt * a SPDT switch * an serial eeprom in an soic case with about 200mil. * equipment to solder * some time to do the job first i wanted to boot the machine with the "hardware hack" on it, the fans started to move, but i got no response from my monitor. but, after changing the position of the switch, it just worked like usual! (on that point i knew, that i've soldered everything correct. because when the empty chip is activated, there is no data sent from the bios chip to the superio.) after booting the machine, i made a svn co of the linuxbios flashrom util, compiled it and had a look if it will work. so, here are my output results from the flashrom util: original bios chip: %<--------------------------------------------------------- benchvice flashrom # ./flashrom --mainboard gigabyte:m57sli Calibrating delay loop... ok No LinuxBIOS table found. Found chipset "NVIDIA MCP55": Enabling flash write... OK. Found board "GIGABYTE GA-M57SLI": Enabling flash write... Serial flash segment 0xfffe0000-0xffffffff enabled Serial flash segment 0x000e0000-0x000fffff enabled Serial flash segment 0xffee0000-0xffefffff disabled Serial flash segment 0xfff80000-0xfffeffff enabled LPC write to serial flash enabled serial flash pin 29 OK. RDID returned ef 30 13 No EEPROM/flash device found. benchvice flashrom # %<-------------------------------------------------------- after changing the position of the spdt switch: %<-------------------------------------------------------- benchvice flashrom # ./flashrom --mainboard gigabyte:m57sli Calibrating delay loop... ok No LinuxBIOS table found. Found chipset "NVIDIA MCP55": Enabling flash write... OK. Found board "GIGABYTE GA-M57SLI": Enabling flash write... Serial flash segment 0 xfffe0000-0xffffffff enabled Serial flash segment 0x000e0000-0x000fffff enabled Serial flash segment 0xffee0000-0xffefffff disabled Serial flash segment 0xfff80000-0xfffeffff enabled LPC write to serial flash enabled serial flash pin 29 OK. RDID returned c2 20 13 MX25L4005 found at physical address: 0xfff80000 Flash part is MX25L4005 (512 KB) No operations were specified. benchvice flashrom # %<---------------------------------------------------------------- after all that information i made for sure some pictures, and following the topic here they are: http://illmeyer.com/hg87/LICENSE http://illmeyer.com/hg87/dscf1597.jpg http://illmeyer.com/hg87/dscf1608.jpg http://illmeyer.com/hg87/dscf1617.jpg http://illmeyer.com/hg87/dscf1621.jpg http://illmeyer.com/hg87/dscf1624.jpg http://illmeyer.com/hg87/dscf1628.jpg http://illmeyer.com/hg87/dscf1629.jpg http://illmeyer.com/hg87/dscf1630.jpg http://illmeyer.com/hg87/dscf1631.jpg at the and i want to thank j0hn for the chip. regards, harald gutmann -- linuxbios mailing list [email protected] http://www.linuxbios.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxbios
