[MinnowBoard] Minnowboard MAX with Dediprog em100 pro SPI emulator

[John Hawley]

On 12/27/2014 04:54 PM, Simon Glass wrote:
> Hi John,
> 
> On 26 December 2014 at 23:08, John 'Warthog9' Hawley
> <warthog19 at eaglescrag.net> wrote:
>> I wouldn't be able to tell you how to get an EM100 to work, as I only
>> use the SF100 & flashtool (recompiled for dediprog, and with a patch to
>> support the newer firmware on my specific dediprog) (As a note any spi
>> flash programmer should work once it's been level converted to 1.8v).
>>
>> Doing a quick reading here the EM100 is a SPI flash emulator for
>> external parts, I.E. it's not really a programmer per-se, but intended
>> to be a device that takes the place of the primary flash part (if I'm
>> reading the descriptions wrong, please correct me).
>>
>> My understanding is that no boards have been explicitly modified to use
>> this emulator, and that the firmware team (at least inside Intel that
>> produces the firmware on uefidk) use flashers like the SF100 and develop
>> directly on the actual board w/ the built-in flash chip.
>>
>> A quick look through the docs for the dediprog led me to:
>>
>> http://www.dediprog.com/save/633.pdf/to/EM100Pro%20Hardware%20Connection_V2.0.pdf
>>
>> page 15
>>
>> I'd need to go dig back through the schematic (and possibly the gerbers)
>> to figure out what exactly pins 7 and 8 on the J1 header go to to give
>> you a clear indication of what's going on there, and I won't be able to
>> get to that till next year (those are both open though if someone else
>> wants to go digging to fill out that information on the wiki)
>>
>> If you do get this working it might be useful to document on the wiki!
> 
> Thanks for the info. I did a bit of digging and found the Minnowboard
> MAX schematic. It shows that it can either connect the CPU to the SPI
> flash or the SPI flash to the external SPI pins. It cannot connect the
> CPU to the external SPI pins (note I am not a hardware engineer).
> 
> So it seems to be impossible, except by unsoldering the flash chip,
> replacing it with a pin header. I'll have to have a rethink about how
> keen I am to fiddle with the board, as by soldering skills are poor!
> 
> Or maybe the SF100-based development isn't as slow as I think?
> 
> Also re the SF100/SF600 - are these well supported on Linux? I can
> only see Windows drivers on the Dediprog site.

I use flashrom under Linux, you will likely need to compile it yourself,
and if you have a newer SF100 the newer firmware needs a patch in
flashrom to work (haven't looked recently if it's been integrated).  If
people want/need I can push my tree up onto github.

- John