Hi,
3mdeb office has two of these KGPE-D16 boards. We also experience some
issues with booting. Built an image from 4.11 branch using stable
SeaBIOS and enabled console over serial port. Using 1x Kingston
KVR16R11D4/16 16GB ECC RAM and booting without issues.
2. Secondary payloads may require some tuning of libpayload config, for
example to increase stack size and heap size (noticed issues with USB
when the stack or heap was too small).
3. The graphics is exposed by BMC ASPEED AST2050, it should allow to use
display. The problems may occur when GRUb is switching display mode or
something. The kernel booting problems may be related to memory training
problem.
4. If you have a discrete GPU, you may include its VGA option ROM into
CBFS using correct naming, SeaBIOS should execute it and provide
graphics output. There is also an option in Kconfig "Onboard VGA is
prmiary", try to deselect it when using discrete GPU.
5. If you do not have BMC running, the fans will keep running at full
speed IIRC. BMC was responsible for fan control. In order to utilize BMC
one needs the BMC flash chip module. The fans are spinning up to max
speed during hardware enumeration in ramstage, probably during Super IO
intialization and BMC initialization. I am not yet familiar with this
board. However maybe if you look into Winbond chip drivers used on KGPE
you may find some settings to tweak the speed, I am not sure.
The only RAM HCL I found are:
https://www.coreboot.org/Board:asus/kgpe-d16#RAM_HCL
https://libreboot.org/docs/hardware/kgpe-d16.html#memory-compatibility-with-...
https://www.raptorengineering.com/coreboot/kgpe-d16-status.php
I would gladly help to resolve those issues, but we lack resources to do
it "pro publico bono". 3mdeb is trying to change it together with
Insurgo Technologies Libres, we are gathering funds for the development
and revivial of this platform:
https://github.com/osresearch/heads/issues/719
Regards,
--
Michał Żygowski
Firmware Engineer
https://3mdeb.com | @3mdeb_com
On 5/9/20 5:33 AM, ragnaros@tenebr.is wrote:
> Recently I'm finally able to get a KGPE-D16 coreboot environment that could always boot, although there are a lot of issues and questions. I'm currently using the 4.11 branch as this board has been dropped in the master branch.
>
> The main issue is memory. It seems there are still issues with memory initialization. The Samsung 16GB sticks I currently have (normal or VLP) do not work when using all orange slots, ending in a bootloop due to DIMM training failure (which is the same error I had when I was trying coreboot on KCMA-D8). However, on KGPE-D16, by installing the 8 sticks to the following slots: D1/D2, B1/B2, E1/E2 and G1/G2, I could always get it past the memory initialization, albeit with this error:
>
> "TrainDQSRdWrPos: negative DQS recovery delay detected! Attempting to continue but your system may be unstable..."
>
> This is currently the only combination that could always boot (and with all 128GB recognized). Other combinations I tested either resulted in some "HARDWARE FAULT: HT_EVENT_HW_SYNCHFLOOD" errors which would soft reset before even reaching the DIMM training part, or it entered the DIMM training part but would never complete.
>
> However, the system is currently not at a point that could properly boot to a system (or even a payload) yet. As of yesterday, the only thing I could boot and steadily function is a Menuet64 floppy image.
>
> 1. I'm using SeaBIOS master, and have put several floppy images into the CBFS, but it seems to only list the last floppy image I added as a boot option (Ramdisk). It appears multiple floppy images is not officially supported in master yet and I've just located the patch regarding this. I'm still new to SeaBIOS so I'm not sure how to modify configuration/bootorder later on, as I currently don't have a configuration/bootorder file supplied and let it use default values.
>
> 2. None of the secondary payloads work. nvramcui hangs with something like "unable to init curs" (I only tried it once and couldn't remember what exactly it is). coreinfo and tint hangs with this "Not enough memory creating EHCI periodic frame list." error. memtest could load, but when it starts testing, it hangs with a glitched screen of blinking characters, among which something like "d h l p t x" could be seen. This also happened when using memtest that comes with the Manjaro Linux boot USB.
>
> 3. Initially I had issues with graphical bootloaders like grub, but after disabling bootsplash image as well as not building the seavgabios.bin (by unchecking the "Include generated option rom that implements legacy VGA BIOS compatibility"), I could get Manjaro's graphical grub to load, but still cannot boot to the kernel (XZ-Compressed Data is corrupt). Maybe this is due to memory, as I think the combination I previously mentioned only guaranteed it to go past the training part, but not anything after that.
>
> 4. Does this board support any other graphical initialization methods? It seems I can only choose "native graphics init" as well as "legacy VGA text mode" framebuffer. I use SeaBIOS with a dedicated nVidia video card (onboard not used), and it seems without bootsplash image or seavgabios.bin I'm able to load something graphical (such as grub and Menuet64).
>
> 5. It seems the board would ramp up the fans to max once it passes the DIMM training and memory clear part (the fans seem to spin at a relatively quiet speed before that, similar to Stock BIOS' Generic profile). As the CPU fans I'm currently using can be really noisy at more than 4300 rpm max, I ended up using a 5.25'' external fan controller (non-PWM) and manually toned it down to an acceptable 2900 rpm (it seems I can't get it to any lower without using a PWM-capable controller). Is there a way to tweak the fan control profiles of the onboard CPU fan ports like the stock BIOS?
>
> This is the first time I ever manage to get a bootable coreboot system, so I'm not sure which part to look into for my issues, especially the RAM part. Is there an up-to-date RAM HCL and guidelines for this board?
>
> At this point, I can always power it on to conduct more tests on this board for any additional logs if needed.
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