[MinnowBoard] Minnowboard MAX with Dediprog em100 pro SPI emulator

[Simon Glass]

Hi John,

On 7 January 2015 at 18:47, John Hawley <john.hawley at intel.com> wrote:
> 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.

Yes it didn't work for me - no support. If you can point me to the
patch that would be interesting.

Regards,
Simon