On 18/06/08 15:45 -0500, Ken.Fuchs@bench.com wrote:
What happened with the OLPC's OpenEC code? Was that ever completed? Did the name change to something else? Is it currently being developed?
I'm not sure what the current status is, you may want to ask on devel@laptop.org. As is often the case with projects like these, there is no shortage of people eager to begin reverse engineering closed source firmware but few of them stick around when they discover the complexity of the task at hand.
In short, embedded controller code is dark magic. You need detailed schematics of your board, a clear indication of the API that the BIOS requires, a JTAG debugger and a lot of time. If you think that coreboot is too platform specfic, then you haven't seen anything yet.
Aas far as coreboot is concerned, we just don't have access to information for any EC enabled platform that we might otherwise support. The only platform we would come even close to being in the ballpark of supporting would be the OLPC, but even then we are missing the schematics and the hardware bits needed to flash the ROM.
What we need is a freely available EC chip that we can easily hack on without complex or expensive hardware. Then the task will be to come up with a reasonable operating system to provide timers and provide a general platform for development. Once you get to that point, then I think there is a real chance that an OpenEC solution could win. Until then, its going to be black hole that makes everybody cringe.
Jordan