Hello Matthew,
On 02.12.21 19:55, Matthew K wrote:
- Am I even looking at the right chip?
No.
Is there a different 32MB Rom that I should be flashing to?
Yes and no. There is another chip, but a current Chromebook shouldn't require you to access the chip directly. Generally, one should be able to restore the firmware and/or add a payload for legacy boot via soft- ware flashing. Also, the security chip should allow you to program the flash via a SuzyQ(uabble?) cable, AIUI. I'm not a Chromebook expert, but I'm sure that this is the direction to look into.
Does the chromebook firmware live on the harddrive somehow (I find this unlikely because the hard drive is replaceable, but I wanted to mention the possibility)? If it's not the bios chip, then what is it?
Could be firmware for the security chip, or maybe the EC. Or maybe both. It's not uncommon to find additional flash chips.
- What sort of expectations should I have for the current status of
coreboot on this mainboard (either from the coreboot or chromium repositories)? What additional work should I expect to have to do if I want to be able to e. g. boot from a linux flash drive?
If you can find the correct branch and config for the chromium version, the coreboot should work. No guarantee for the upstream version, but I would expect it to work too or be easy to fix.
Regarding booting from a Linux flash drive, you have choices to make :) You can either try one of the legacy boot methods, BIOS (SeaBIOS pay- load) or UEFI (TianoCore payload), or some generic boot-loader payload like GRUB or FILO. The latter need configuration, however, and it's only advisable to use them when one is used to configure the boot- loader manually. While all the mentioned payloads should run on any x86 machine, they sometimes lack compatible drivers.
Nico