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DavidSmoot's avatar
DavidSmoot
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8 months ago

Read flash attached to Max II in Parallel Flash Configuration on legacy system

I have a customer requesting that I reverse engineer the firmware on a legacy system so he can program some older blank stock for spares. No available source code. No available schematics. The ...
Programmable Logic Device
WZ2's avatar
WZ2
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8 months ago

Hi David,

Based on your description, I guess you want to read back the contents of the Micron Flash (28F128J3), right? From my point of view, this is quite difficult:

  1. The "Examine" function can be used to read back the MAX II internal program, that is, the contents of the MAX II cfm/ufm.
  2. The PFL IP itself does not have the ability to read back the contents of the flash; possibly the ASMI IP has this ability, but I’m not sure whether MAX II supports this IP.
  3. If it is purely about reading back the flash, the Micron manufacturer might be able to help you better. As far as I know, if you can connect to the flash pins, they can read back the contents of the flash using flash commands.
  4. However, even if you read back the image from the flash, it is, in my opinion, not feasible to reverse-engineer the .sof file from that image, so restoring the internal logic layout is not possible.

Best regards,

WZ