Messages in this thread | | | Date | Tue, 10 Feb 1998 17:49:12 +0100 | From | Stefan Reinauer <> | Subject | ANNOUNCE: /dev/bios - flash rom bios driver |
| |
Hi folks,
While in former times these BIOSs were implemented by using ROM or EPROM (both can´t be updated without opening your computer) today´s PC hardware is often delivered with a so called FLASH ROM. These can be rewritten by a single piece of software.
Now it happened that we live in an evil world and most hardware manufacturers only wrote this software for that one proprietary operating system that still seems to be around. BAD!
As a solution I tried to write some Linux software which is able to do the same fine thing. The BIOS is in some way a piece of hardware and it's very sensitive. So I decided to write a kernel driver that contains the neccessary information to read/write those flashchips. Userland programs that stop multitasking to prevent bios write failures are undiscussable in my opion.
With this driver it's possible to do things like
dd if=/bios.bin of=/dev/bios bs=128k count=1
I tested the driver with different kinds of configurations, but all using Intel PCI chipsets. Writing to the flashchip has only been tested on a Winbond W29EE011 chip.
If you are interested in testing this driver, you may have a look at
http://www.freiburg.linux.de/~stepan/projects.html
If want to test the driver or if you tested it successfully/unsuccessfully, please mail me. I am happy about getting any kind of comment.
Best regards, Stefan Reinauer
-- http://www.freiburg.linux.de/ GGI - The right thing to do.
- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.rutgers.edu
| |