Manually Flashing Firmware

DANGER

Flashing your own firmware has the potential to brick your device. Do not do this unless you are sure you know what you're doing and have a way to recover from a bad flash. Some level of knowledge with using the Linux command line is required.

The steps below assume you are flashing an image named coreboot.rom; substitute it as necessary.

1. Download flashrom, decompress, and ensure it is executable:
   • wget -o flashrom.tar.gz https://mrchromebox.tech/files/util/flashrom_ups_libpci37_20240418.tar.gz
   • tar zxf flashrom.tar.gz
   • chmod +x flashrom
2. Flash your custom ROM
   • Backup your current firmware (just in case things go wrong): sudo ./flashrom -p internal -r backup.rom
   • Flash your custom firmware:
     • AMD devices: sudo ./flashrom -p internal -w coreboot.rom
     • Intel devices: sudo ./flashrom -p internal --ifd -i bios -w coreboot.rom
3. Reboot
   • Assuming flashrom shows success at the end of the process, reboot.

IMPORTANT

Flashing your firmware directly in this manner does not preserve any of the device-specific info from the stock firmware (e.g., serial number, HWID, ethernet MAC address) that flashing via the Firmware Utility Script does.