On Wed, Aug 24, 2011 at 03:37:58PM -0700, SAL-e wrote:
Hi,
I have old Asus M3A78-EM [1] board inside my HTPC. I'm looking to speed up the boot process of my HTPC. I have heard that coreboot can boot directly into Linux or GRUB. I checked the supported list and found out that my board is not on the list, but at the same time I see that very similar board Asus M4A78-EM [2] is on and supported well. So I am wondering how difficult and how much work wold be required to port coreboot to my board.
I'm not the best one to answer, I've been trying to get my M4A77TD-PRO to boot for one year or more and it only loads FILO, SeaBIOS + GRUB and then linux but linux can't find the disks (the same disk that the three payload read without problem).
There's a FAQ which tells you the information you can send to the list to enable people to advise you better: http://www.coreboot.org/FAQ#Will_coreboot_work_on_my_machine.3F
From what I see in the Asus web you link to, the two boards are not
that similar. They have the same southbridge but they're different sockets. M3A78-EM is AM2 / AM2+ . I haven't checked the coreboot support for that, but maybe there's some other supported board more similar than M4A78-EM (AM3)? maybe mahogany_fam10 ? It might depend on the CPU model too, or the SuperIO.
There's not enough info to tell, but for the existing info it does not seem a very difficult case. The socket and southbridge are used in other supported boards. But it's not going to be compile and install. You'll need spare flash chips, a serial port cable, and define a new board, mostly by copying from elsewhere, testing, etc. As far as I can tell the chips are documented and similar code to copy from should be there.
Secondary question would be if I have to upgrade my HTPC witch board would be better for using with coreboot: Intel i3-2100T based system or AMD E-350 based?
In general AMD works much better for coreboot, because AMD contributes much code to coreboot and has detailed documentation published in developer.amd.com . Intel does not help coreboot, usually requires NDAs (from what I hear) for disclosing documentation and it looks more like a guessing game. In particular I hear people are using E-350 with coreboot, although I don't remember the details.
Thank you, SAL-e
[1] http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/AMD_AM2Plus/M3A78EM/ [2] http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/AMD_AM2Plus/M4A78EM/
PS. Please replay directly or CC in your reply to me, because I am not member of the list yet. 10x
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