@libreleah Do you know if it's possible to back up the vendor BIOS of the T1650 in service mode?

Failing that, do you know what sizes of chip-clip will work if using a pi pico or something?

@developing_agent yeah service mode removes all the flash protections. you should be able to dump it that way.

@libreleah Do you know if it's an identical dump or if the bios makes some changes or something at runtime? I've heard atombioses (for example) dumped at runtime can be different from on-flash.

@developing_agent do it that way and then also do an external dump and compare them. then that will answer your question. however, my immediately suspicion is that, no, it won't be affect.d

@libreleah 👍

@libreleah @developing_agent the libreboot installation documentation says:

the factory firmware write might EFI variables to flash during shutdown sequence, so you should pull the plug to shut it down (remove the power by pulling the plug) after flashprog says VERIFIED.

So I expect the dumps will be different, but not in a significant way.

@noisytoot @developing_agent In practise, I doubt anything would happen.

I always recommend external operation anyway. But this person asked for my opinion. My hunch says no.

But nobody should ever take such a chance, hence my original response to this individual.

@libreleah @developing_agent My optiplex 5050's internal and external dumps did differ. There's a log that's used for stuff like intrusion detection and I suspect it's writing to that.

@noisytoot @libreleah Have you ever tried reflashing it with an internal dump?

@developing_agent @libreleah Yes. It worked fine.

@noisytoot @libreleah That gives me at least some confidence then that an internal dump of the proprietary firmware will be a valid backup.

Am still a bit tempted to buy a SOIC16 clip and try it both ways, if only because I'm a big chicken.

@developing_agent the internal dump as in, the one you dumped internally, is probably fine even if something did change. the firmware is writing EFI variables to itself. i doubt those will affect anything.

they only matter in the shut down context after flashing libreboot, since those vars no longer make sense and could corrupt libreboot if they're written like that, hence the documentation telling you to pull the plug.

i still recommend using the external flasher though, if you're wily enough