[SGVLUG] Raspberry Pi + Pi Cobbler + flashrom

[Lan Dang]

Hi all,

(cross-posting to SGVHAK mailing list)

Dmitriy's live demo at the SGVLUG was flashing a BIOS chip using the Raspberry Pi.  This is something he actually did because his netbook was having problems, and it sounded like the BIOS chip was corrupt.  He did some research, bought some parts, removed the chip from the motherboard, downloaded the BIOS image from the netbook manufacturer's website, and then flashed the chip.  (I can't remember if he flashed his original chip or bought another one.  The key is that he is doing this over SPI so he needed an SPI BIOS chip.)

The Pi Cobbler is a well-labelled breakout board for the GPIO pins.  You insert that into a protoboard with a chip socket.  You wire the connections between the breakout board and the chip socket.  (Look at the datasheet.).  You install flashrom and some oher software on the Pi, so you can talk over the SPI bus.  You need to use an SPI BIOS chip.  The steps after that are straightforward: identify the device, and then use flashrom to talk to the device.  You can do things like read the contents of the chip, erase the contents, write a new ROM to the chip.
So for those of you who didn't get a good look at Dmitriy's Raspberry Pi and Pi Cobbler setup, here is a photo I took.


http://imgur.com/drWmViX



Now if you don't have the Pi Cobbler, the setup would look more like this:
http://imgur.com/eORrbMW


The reddit discussion is here, though there is not much to it.
http://www.reddit.com/r/raspberry_pi/comments/1fe9i0/bricked_my_bios_used_my_rpi_with_flashrom_to/




Now I'd like to say that Dmitriy had a happy ending and that the BIOS chip was reinstalled into the motherboard and it booted up perfectly.  But I think there was some damage to the motherboard when he removed the chip, so he ended up buying a new motherboard.  But he was left with a great respect for the usefulness of the Raspberry Pi.  He mentioned that one of the things he loves about it is its versatility.  Simply by switching out the SD card, he can go from using it to troubleshoot hardware at work to using it as a media player at home.

Lan