A removable BIOS?

Posted Sep 11, 2006 22:15 UTC (Mon) by jg (guest, #17537)
In reply to: A removable BIOS? by thomask
Parent article: The OLPC and BIOS upgrades

Sockets cost money.... We have such a socket on the development boards.

But it turns out that if the embedded controller code, stored in the
same flash that the BIOS is stored in, is trashed, the board doesn't
even power up enough to be able to use a PLCC Flash part. (The
embedded controller is responsible for battery and other
power control in the machine). We've done this
(once).

You *REALLY* don't want to have the BIOS rom completely trashed. Recovery
at that point may require complex stuff talking to the embedded controller,
and is so painful we decided when we managed to do this once it wasn't
worth even trying to fix the board.