flashrom for x86

I compiled flashrom (webpage) for X86 Windows CE. I used it to flash CoreBoot onto some Windows CE thin clients without pulling the BIOS chip. I have attached it to this message in case anyone else would find it useful. It is a command line utility, and use it at your own risk, after reading the documentation carefully!



Attachments
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flashrom.zip.001 (96KB - 11 downloads)
flashrom.zip.002 (48KB - 8 downloads)

Did this turn your CE thin client into a normal machine that could boot XP or something? I was just curious because there was a CE program called FlashCE on my AMD 50x15 that I used to reflash the bios chip with a non-CE boot.

I've always wished I had the ability to flash a normal laptop with a bios flash that would load the 50X15 Ghost image I created. I like my AMD PIC just fine, but wish it were more portable...

I wish there were a way to read the bios chip in my AMD PIC and copy it to a laptop...heck, if it were socketed like the old days it would be no problem.

So I guess the question is will this software read a bios chip that has a CE boot installed on it?

BTW, I can't open either of the zip files after downloading and renaming them...

have you tried a dos boot loader for the CE bin file?

Hmmmm.....that's an idea I hadn't thought of...

Sorry not to reply to this post until now; I didn't expect anyone would actually take interest. Rich, to open the files you would need to leave the names as is and open them into a zip utility (I used 7-Zip). You might have to override the wildcard of the file open box to select them. In answer to your other question, using this utility, I was able to flash Coreboot onto the thin client. I also found a standard Phoenix BIOS image for this motherboard to flash on. The former was for running Linux which I am doing, but with the latter I presume I could've run XP if I had wanted to.

If you found a CE-only BIOS for your specific hardware, you could use any standard BIOS flasher for your motherboard to flash the image. Personally I would go for the DOS bootloader instead, as many thin clients do it that way too. The only reason I flashed the BIOS was to run Linux when the built-in BIOS only supported booting CE.

Here's the thing. My AMD PIC already has a CE ROM bios on it. I can flash a standard bios image to the thing with no problem. What I cannot do when the thing is running is read the bios image that is there...at least not through the CE5 OS. I cannot boot any other OS with the thing either...only CE5.

I guess I could run a DOS bootloader on another machine with a prom reader/writer and connect to the pins of the bios chip...but such a pain in the behind and always the option of corrupting the chip going from low to high voltage state and back again.

Within the AMD PIC there is a software utility called CEFlash in the Windows folder used to write a bios to the chip. But it doesn't support reading the chip and saving the existing bios image.

So if I could find a utility, that ran under Windows CE, that would read an existing bios image (which is a CE image) then I could save it and reflash it to some other x86 device. I could also use a Ghost image file of the hard drive with CE5 on it and install that on the laptop as well. Basically creating a portable AMD PIC laptop...especially if the laptop had an AMD GX processor in it that already has built in video/audio stuff and doesn't require external drivers.

How should I use this wonderful x86 flashrom?

Okay, ran the program on AMD 50x15.

Gave it the command: flashrom -r amdpic -p internal

Which as I understand it is supposed to read the rom and write it to a file named "amdpic." Do I have that correct?

But when I hit enter, it gives me a... "Calibrating delay loop...OK." and then it just hangs there for what seems like forever. At first I saw the USB flash drive light up showing it is being accessed...but then nothing after that.

What am I doing wrong?

Probably let it run for a while