Quux wrote:
that is the point - the issue was discussed here a couple of days ago.
a regular PCI expansion BIOS is called too late during POST by legacy BIOS. The Altera MAXII has a patch field to put a flash mem into.
this PCI space mapping business is the key point. chipset's provide for booting from PCI space but I wonder whether they need to be told to do so by a hardware switch / signal or whether a small patching of legacy bios would do the trick. --Q
What is the actual problem here? Accessing factory BIOS write enables when the mainboard vendor has enabled "security through obscurity" mechanisms?
If so reverse engineer their flash BIOS write enable method or get out the soldering iron and bypass the write enable garbage and enable it with a switch/jumper or unused chipset gpio and a pull-up/down resistor.
Trying to have control from PCI space via IPL BIOS ROM isn't supported by every chipset and does not give you full control of the hardware. How much control do you want/need and do you really need that chipset supported? Isn't it simpler and lower cost to just solder a few connections vs using a PCI FPGA card that costs more or equal to the motherboard?
The software reverse engineering method takes more time initially but then it's easy later to modify thousands of machines in a cluster or application. If there is enough money for Intel to be interested in supporting you they will. If there is not enough interest, is your project really just a hobby and isn't reverse engineering part of the fun?
The hardware method is easy for a board or two but lots of time later for a thousands of boards.
-Bari