Re: e1000e NVM corruption issue status

[Krzysztof Halasa <khc@pm.waw.pl>]

Tim Gardner <timg@tpi.com> writes:

> I've been experimenting with unmapping flash space until its actually
> needed, e.g., in the functions that use the E1000_READ_FLASH and
> E1000_WRITE_FLASH macros. Along the way I looked at how flash write
> cycles are initiated because I was having a hard time believing that
> having flash space mapped was part of the root cause. However, it looks
> like its pretty simple to initiate a write or erase cycle. All of the
> required action bits in ICH_FLASH_HSFSTS and ICH_FLASH_HSFCTL must be 1,
> and these 2 register are in the correct order if X was writing 0xff in
> ascending order.

But... do you really have a flash chip there? I think it's more about
EEPROM (a serial usually 8-pin small chip, keeping the MAC address and
hardware configuration). Flash chips are used for diskless booting
(though corrupting them can make the machine unbootable of course).

Sure, writing to a parallel flash chip is easy, much easier than to
serial EEPROM.
-- 
Krzysztof Halasa