One-off flash reader / writer ?

[Stonent]

I've got a DVR / DVD Recorder made by LG (LRM-519) with a missing drive that I purchased for $14. The unit itself is based around an Intel Celeron 733, with i830 graphics and an ICH4 controller. Apparently it ran some Windows CE 5.0 version. LG will not assist me in getting any recovery media to restore the OS to a new drive. They said I'd have to send it into a service center to have the drive replaced with one of theirs for the tune of a few hundred dollars, so I thought I'd hack around with it a bit and see if I can convert it somehow to be a PC or at least bypass the signature checking so it will boot up some other OS.

The bios is on a soldered PLCC SST49LF008B 8Mbit flash chip. It supports FWH, LPC, and apparently parallel flashing as well at 3V.

I'd like to dump its contents, and possibly reprogram it, but don't have a programmer and don't want to have to buy one for this one time project.

I've got some unused AVRs and PICs if there was an easy breadboardable project to read write this if anyone has some suggestions.

[amyk]

I can't find a datasheet for the B version but the one for the A version shows FWH protocol is a simple 4-bit bus with no minimum speed so a MCU should be able to bit-bang it.

[Stonent]

Yeah B is the same as A but adds low pin count IO compatibility.

Operations such as Memory Read and Memory Write uses Intel FWH proprietary protocol.

That part was a little deterring though.