Mesa Has Already Seen More Code Changes This Year Than All Of 2015

[starshipeleven]

So it is simple to eventually unbrick the vga:

Are you assuming that the vga can initialize itself enough to allow you to reflash it without a VGABIOS? Think again, it won't. If you brick it it's a brick, and you need to desolder the chip to reflash it manually.

And that's assuming Flashrom can actually see the chip in that card at all.

as far as your comment to my observation: I haven't read it but I search to imagine what your long comment means.

Read it damnit. How can you even post a multiparagraph whine about what I said if you don't even read it?

About flash: there are several utilities to flash bios from DOS or windows. There few commands, the file and the operation.

That's because they are hardware-specific and are keyed already. Flashrom is a tool supposed to flash many devices, so it cannot be keyed to work only on some hardware just because the user is stupid and cannot write a few more options in the CLI and use his brain.
flashrom --programmer internal internal -c "CHIPNAME" -w newbios.bin

this is the command to flash a firmware. Is it hard? complex? You see hexadecimal memory addresses? Do you need to copy shit into RAM and then flash it to NAND by writing addresses and offsets in hexadecimal?

How the site are made: there is the main page the download page the description of the program which explains how to use it.

Flashrom has better docs than most flashers I've used.
That said, they refer you to the manual on the site, which you should read before using it as it explains how to use it.

If I see a program as flashrom I'm not in the utilization ambient, I'm in the programming ambient.

Wrong. You have no fucking idea of what is the programming ambient.
Flashrom is a command line tool that is supposed to be generic and work on all devices, so it lacks the rails of most vendor-provided tools.

Linux developers still don't understand this difference.

Flashrom is developed for all platforms, dumbass. It works on Windows and on OSX too.

To know about my hardware the final user must not write sudo lshw in the shell, he has to open a program as HWINFO reading in coherent way the features of every devices listed.

There are GUI programs that list hardware also on linux.

So how to flash firmwares: I open the program I select the device I load the firmware and flash it. Or I use the old method: DOS: program options firmware. It is simple to understand.

And flashrom how does break this paradigm exactly? It's a CLI program, so it works like the DOS you mentioned.

Linux has to match simplicity because simplicity makes the system harmonious. simplicity harmonizes the complexity. Although many improvements are made, linux operating systems still lack this vision.

Linux has to very well keep its complexity available to power users so I can fix shit, Windows isn't "simple" it's dumb and dumbed down.

[dungeon]

Thanks! Now that makes sense.

I always make sense , so to me first thing is does something work or not and if that work does it work fine... and then maybe last of the question to me is in which percentage is something really opensource or not.

But here you have people who prioritize opensource movement above anything else and praise opensource even in times or when that does not work really fine and takes down closed source even without any other reason

[dungeon]

This seems like a great signature line. I have no idea what it means, but I love the way it sounds.

If you happen to have philosophical ego, i can propose mantra for you - nVeni, nVidi, nVici

[Azrael5]

Are you assuming that the vga can initialize itself enough to allow you to reflash it without a VGABIOS? Think again, it won't. If you brick it it's a brick, and you need to desolder the chip to reflash it manually.

I use the secondo VGA card where I plug the d-sub cable, I put the bootable DOS USB then I run atiflash and flash the bios of the other VGA. Why I should desolder the chip!? I can flash the bios without any problem with this way. The only question is that the pciid and ssid of the card are wrong reporting the data od the id of the card instead of the subsystem ID however I can flash the bios.

[starshipeleven]

Why I should desolder the chip!?

You said after you bricked the card. "simple to unbrick the vga".
After the card is bricked, you can't use its integrated chip flashing system, because the card is bricked and nothing in that card is initialized on boot.

The only question is that the pciid and ssid of the card are wrong reporting the data od the id of the card instead of the subsystem ID however I can flash the bios.

This is also another problem on top of the above. Official flash tools are keyed to IDs. People had flashed the wrong VGABIOS or the flash went wrong for other reasons, and since the reported IDs were different from known hardware as the card was reporting garbage IDs the official tools could not save it.

Flashtool does not care about card IDs, as long as it sees a chip it can flash it. That's why it has 2-3 more options than official tools.

[Azrael5]

You said after you bricked the card. "simple to unbrick the vga".
After the card is bricked, you can't use its integrated chip flashing system, because the card is bricked and nothing in that card is initialized on boot.

This is also another problem on top of the above. Official flash tools are keyed to IDs. People had flashed the wrong VGABIOS or the flash went wrong for other reasons, and since the reported IDs were different from known hardware as the card was reporting garbage IDs the official tools could not save it.

Flashtool does not care about card IDs, as long as it sees a chip it can flash it. That's why it has 2-3 more options than official tools.

I've seen online a way to reset the VGA bios by short circuit the 1 and 8 pin soldering a wire on them perhaps this method resetting the chip in order to delete the bios fix any problem.

[starshipeleven]

I've seen online a way to reset the VGA bios by short circuit the 1 and 8 pin soldering a wire on them perhaps this method resetting the chip in order to delete the bios fix any problem.

"Resetting VGA bios"?
A bricked card is a card where the firmware is erased or corrupted and therefore the hardware is NOT initialized when you give it power. The card does not start, any tool cannot see it at all.
You can short all pins you want, unless you load another firmware in there the hardware does NOT start and if the hardware does not start you cannot load another firmware (without desoldering the chip). There are some cards that have a dual BIOS (on two chips), but that's not the norm, it's done on some very high-end gaming cards.

Did you ever try to erase the BIOS in a motherboard? Does it do anything apart from running fans afterwards?

[Amarildo]

I'm always curious to why such a Control Panel would be needed. I'm using Dualboot, Linux and a well known Gameloader from Redmond for my occasional gaming needs. Even under Windows, i open that tools about once every 2 years. The last time was finding that "Enable Freesync" Slider once, that was somehow disabled by an Crimson driverupdate 3 month ago. The last time before that run is at least another year back in time.

One of the reasons is control. For example, I like to keep my GPU cool. I can do that on Windows by moving the Fan slider to 55% and the GPU will never get hotter than 45-50ºC at FullLoad. The same task, in Linux, requires too much thinking/tinkering and it tedious and prone to errors. Contrary to what some have suggested, "RTFM" does not apply to most people, most probably think "oh I have to read a manual and do this bunch of stuff just to achieve this simple task that already works on Windows? Guess which OS I'll be running". And don't get me wrong, is not that I personally don't like to mess with software (it's tedious, but I like it), it's just that making things harder will not get Linux much marketshare, and this also means we'll have slower/poorer support for things that matter to most people. While I'm here re-compiling the Kernel/Mesa/xorg-server because developers introduce stupid bugs or are still trying years-old technologies, people using Windows are just enjoying their games with twice the performance. We could be doing the same thing if "Linux" as a whole was easier for everybody. It's getting there, but it's far away from perfect (not that Windows is, though).

Without this control is hard to test things too, e.g. OverClocking, which seems to work best on Linux for me. Since most of my games ATM have reduced performance on Linux if compared to Windows, it wouldn't hurt to extract ~10 FPS more but increasing clocks and voltages a bit

[starshipeleven]

One of the reasons is control. For example, I like to keep my GPU cool. I can do that on Windows by moving the Fan slider to 55% and the GPU will never get hotter than 45-50ºC at FullLoad. The same task, in Linux, requires too much thinking/tinkering and it tedious and prone to errors. Contrary to what some have suggested, "RTFM" does not apply to most people, most probably think "oh I have to read a manual and do this bunch of stuff just to achieve this simple task that already works on Windows? Guess which OS I'll be running". And don't get me wrong, is not that I personally don't like to mess with software (it's tedious, but I like it), it's just that making things harder will not get Linux much marketshare, and this also means we'll have slower/poorer support for things that matter to most people. While I'm here re-compiling the Kernel/Mesa/xorg-server because developers introduce stupid bugs or are still trying years-old technologies, people using Windows are just enjoying their games with twice the performance. We could be doing the same thing if "Linux" as a whole was easier for everybody.

If people on Linux would produce less hot air and more GUI code that would be fixed quickly.

All this stuff can be done by simply reading/writing a bunch of text values in /proc or /sys or whatever, anyone can whip together a Python script with a basic GUI to do that by point-and-click, no need to write stuff in C.

[Azrael5]

"Resetting VGA bios"?
A bricked card is a card where the firmware is erased or corrupted and therefore the hardware is NOT initialized when you give it power. The card does not start, any tool cannot see it at all.
You can short all pins you want, unless you load another firmware in there the hardware does NOT start and if the hardware does not start you cannot load another firmware (without desoldering the chip). There are some cards that have a dual BIOS (on two chips), but that's not the norm, it's done on some very high-end gaming cards.

Did you ever try to erase the BIOS in a motherboard? Does it do anything apart from running fans afterwards?

Perhaps I've got the solution: an eeprom programmer able to erase save and copy bios in those kind of chips, is is also able to modify the hex into the chip. It is a bit expansive. Today I made a try to another video card but I burned it. That vga had another kind of problem it missed the pciid and 5 adapters were exposed instead of usual 2. However now it is burned.