ESP8266 Community Forum

What do people think will be the easiest way to dump the firmware?

I have the latest module here but am having issues supplying enough current at 3.3v, I've just found an lm317t which should work but it'll be tomorrow before I can solder up a board.

Sorry tinhead it won't let me reply to PMs on here and your comment doesn't show up on HAD!

At least the on chip memory can be read by the tool in the vm XTCOM_UTILITY.
But doing this for larger memory ranges might be impractical since every offset change must be made manually to the gui and the read byte copied somewhere. I'm sure the protocol to command the readouts is simple making it a programming experience to write a little script to automate the read out. But since spi is unlikely memory mapped, that's a limited option

Getting the XTCOM_UTILITY to work is an important step as this can be used to load applications to ram without having to write the spi flash. This leads to a second option: writing a small programm that just streams out the spi flash content via uart.

With a raspberry pi at hand you could use flashrom to read out the spi flash while the esp8266 is kept at power down state. But without rpi and clips/soldering this might be impractical.

Can you tell us about your experience with the XTCOM_UTILITY?
Does the included dll offer more functionality than the gui makes accessible?

XTCOM_UTILITY ? Afaik it can only write firmware to memory or flash, but not read back.

I would normally desolder that spi flash IC and put into external programmer, especially on more or less unknown circuit like these modules.

Anyway, powerdown pin is normally good idea and should solve the power issues as well. What spi flash is on your board, Winbond 25Q40 or 80 or something else? To make a dump one can use any kind of "spi flash programmer", e.g. FTDI based one.

Flash chip seems to be a 25Q40.

I don't want to desolder it as I don't trust my skills enough to get it working again.

May try soldering some wires to the chip in place and try reading it with an RPi.

The utility can read one address at a time right? Does it use a COM port as I'm using a USB to UART adapter, are there any decent windows utilities to sniff the COM port?