Posted on 05/09/2009 3:07:52 AM PDT by Halfmanhalfamazing
The Flashrom utility is developed by the CoreBoot project (formerly known as LinuxBIOS) as a way to read, write, erase, and verify flash ROM chips. Flashrom has been in development for quite a while (nearly a decade), but now they have finally come out with a version 0.9.0 release and soon expect to reach a 1.0 status. This utility supports nearly every x86 motherboard after having worked on support for over 150 flash chip families (and many various for each family), 75 different chipsets, workarounds for non-standard motherboards, and there is no need for CD-ROM or floppy disk.
Previously Linux users have had to create an MS-DOS or FreeDOS boot disk and then run a proprietary DOS-based BIOS flashing program, but it is now becoming easy and universally supported to flash the BIOS from your desktop. Flashrom can also flash a BIOS perfectly fine over SSH or through other means as long as there is root access. Flashrom also supports cross-flashing and hot-flashing.
While Flashrom 0.9 is a great step for free software and Linux hardware support, Carl-Daniel Hailfinger shared with us that they already have plenty of "exciting code" they plan to merge for the 1.0 release and it should end up being a "truly marvelous" release. At this time, Flashrom is CLI-based with no GUI, but the options are simple to backup a BIOS image, erase a BIOS chip, and to flash the BIOS with a new image.
(Excerpt) Read more at phoronix.com ...
That’s just wrong. I just got a visual of flashing my motherboard BIOS.
Expose yourself to computers.
I just received a used Thinkpad A30. I think the CPU is 1 Ghz and 256 megs of RAM. What flavor of Linux would you suggest I install?
Ubuntu 9.04, PCLinuxOS 2009, or Mandriva 2009. Puppy is fun too, but the others are complete Windows replacements.
I've been trying all three of those as virtual machines, and my experience has been very positive; also, I have enjoyed experimenting with Fedora 11's beta.
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