FlashROM 0.9.6 Released For Open-Source BIOS Flashing

FlashROM 0.9.6 has been released, which is an open-source utility for reading/writing/erasing/validating flash ROM chips for BIOS/UEFI/CoreBoot/Firmware/ROM images on motherboards and other devices.

FlashROM supports various flash interfaces, more than 300 different flash chip types/models, 220 different chipsets, 401 motherboards have been verified to work with it, 50 different PCI devices work with FlashROM, and there's various other features. Below are the complete highlights of this new release.

- Parallel, LPC, FWH and SPI flash interfaces.
- Support for onboard programming and external programmers.
- 300 (+12 since 0.9.5) flash chip types/models some with a number of variants each.
- 220 (+44 since 0.9.5) different chipsets, some with multiple flash controllers.
- 401 (+27 since 0.9.5) mainboards verified to be working.
- Flash chip package agnostic. DIP32, PLCC32, DIP8, SO8/SOIC8, TSOP32/40/48, BGA and more have all been verified to work.
- 50 PCI devices, various USB and parallel port devices, and all external programmers compatible with serprog or SI Prog can be used for flashing.
- No physical access needed. root access is sufficient.
- No bootable floppy disk, bootable CD-ROM or other media needed.
- No keyboard or monitor needed. Simply reflash remotely via SSH.
- No instant reboot needed. Reflash your ROM in a running system, verify it, be happy. The new firmware will be present next time you boot.
- Crossflashing and hotflashing is possible as long as the flash chips are electrically and logically compatible (same protocol). Great for recovery.
- Scriptability. Reflash a whole pool of identical machines at the same time from the command line. It is recommended to check flashrom output and error codes.
- Speed. flashrom is much faster than vendor flash tools.
- Supports Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD, DragonFly BSD, OpenBSD, Nexenta, Solaris, Mac OS X and DOS fully, Windows partially (no flashing of mainboards). Please refer to the README for build instructions.

More details on this new FlashROM release are available from flashrom.org.