[weblacky]

Yo All,
A question/comment has been put to me that gave me pause as to ANOTHER solution to this PIMM-change problem (900 Mhz-ers mostly), but also BAD flashes.  That's actually what the original comment was about, how would you cure a corrupted, interrupted, PROM flash, specifically on a Fuel Mainboard? 

They claim that they made the mistake of installing a PROM upgrade when they suspected they had a graphics card issue that caused the system to freeze up. But they assumed that the freezing was caused by specific feature of a graphics system when you run a graphics intensive program. So they shut everything off and just simply attempted to upgrade their PROM on the desktop console but apparently the system froze during this and the PROM has never been working since. I don't know if their L1 works, I assume it does, but I don't have the board at this time. But this user made a comment that they had investigated and they were fairly certain they knew where the PROM was actually being stored on the board.

I've been told that the two sticker-labelled chips near the lower XIO graphics slot IS the PROM...spread over two chips...perhaps interleaved...who knows, at this time.

   

Since the Atmel ID chip is separated, we KNOW the IDENTITY isn't embedded in the PROM image.  So what about grafting a pre-existing the PROM image from a donor system with the correct CPU (or at least a 500Mhz PIMM config)!  I don't have the equipment, currently, to do this but apparently they are just TSOP chips so soldering isn't an issue.

I also don't know the chips because the stickers cover them presently.  But MAYBE taking a late-version PROM image (same board part number required?) and over writing those two chips (identically with the pair from a donor) and then boot the system and perform an all clear...but would it work?

The L1 can obviously run with ANY misconfigured CPU, so we KNOW that data isn't intermingled.  So a previous L1 with a grafted PROM image should be Okay as it should learn its ID from the atmel chip under a full reset of ALL NVRAM data.

What do you think?  

I'm also starting to wonder if you COMBINE the "data dumps" from this thread with real ripped PROM images and if someone can read the last PROM upgrade patch upgrade file (IRIX Patch 7208: IP35 PROM) as a firmware image ...maybe we can sectionally find differences and similarities to:

1. Are all PROM images exactly the same with JUST the CPU CONFIG struct difference...or is there more?
   
2. Are these just small sections where, given enough images to play with, we can find out how to change or patch sections...then write directly to the chips?
   
3. Will simple, full, untouched transplant of chips or their images...without modification of any kind...work?
   
4. Does this mean we can providing pre-flashed chips (on 500Mhz settings of course) as a product for people to attempt removal and installation after a bad flash, PIMM screw-up, or other unseen issue for Fuel?
   

Thoughts, knowledge, comments?