Uses for SPI Flash

[enip]

In the end I ended up ordering a CH341A and a test clip since that should be able to get me out of almost anything ;-) .

Never celebrate too early. I've recently bought one and used it to dump firmware from my router's surface soldered flash. It didn't work because the power from the test clip leaked into the board. If only there was some kind of diode on the flash's VCC it might work (I guess), but it was not my case. The clip worked well with a DIMM SPD chip though, both read and write.

If I was PINE I'd put a socketed flash onto the board like the one you see on the PC desktop boards. Instead they've made it soldered and there isn't even a hardware switch to disable it even though the flash is the first (right?) boot priority for rk3399. So in case you mess the flash up but it still looks like a bootable device for the chip's BROM, how do you fix it without desoldering? I hope they've made it available with a test clip right on-board so that the clip's VCC doesn't leak into the whole board.