It used to be the case BIOS were socketed.
Now, there's no socket, no header (not even the footprint for it) and of course no microcontroller-based flash method.
It would cost them literal cents to do, but they don't. It's a shame.
Now, there's no socket, no header (not even the footprint for it) and of course no microcontroller-based flash method.
It would cost them literal cents to do, but they don't. It's a shame.
The clip is a hack. And it also does assume there's a diode to protect the board from back-feeding power, or else you have to turn on the board and do it warm, which has its own issues.
When the flash chip isn't socketed, it would cost literally nothing to provide the footprint for a programming header. Just SPI on a header.
That there isn't one is pretty much the middle finger to their customers.
>It's also an extra cost added to millions of units which maybe 1-10 customers will ever actually make use of. It's just cheaper to offer a program to mail the boards in to be flashed.
Negligible cost for just a header, even less so for a footprint.
It's not about these 1-10 customers, but about local repair shops (or any friendly tech guy) being able to do this. Much better than a mailback.
There probably is also some sort of "header" to allow programming Flash in the factory, but it's going to be a set of test pads that need a "bed of nails" or similar to use. I suppose you could standardise it and make it easier to field use (others mention tag-connect cables), but it's such a niche use case I'm not sure anyone would spend the time on standardising it.
Although I think clips are roughly the same price if you go that route as well.