Hi Ben,
On 01.06.2009 01:27, audiossis@netspace.net.au wrote:
I'm new to the Coreboot project.
Welcome!
I am an experienced electronics technician, so desoldering and burning flash chips is second nature to me, but I'm not a programmer so please forgive me if this seems like a silly question.
There are no silly questions.
My target system is a Clevo laptop with an Intel 82855PM/GM northbridge and an 82801DB(ICH-4m) south bridge. Both of these chips are listed on the supported chipsets page (albeit I understand that the 82855PM/GM is still a work in progress).
There's one problem with your target system: It's a laptop. Laptops have embedded controllers and those are _very_ hairy to deal with because they are usually undocumented and talking with them in unexpected ways can even turn off the machine or wreak other havoc.
My question is, do I have to set any build flags or edit any configuration files before building Coreboot, to support these chips? Or does Coreboot support every device on the supported chipsets page "out of the box" so to speak?
Due to size constraints in today's flash chips, adding support for multiple chipsets (or even multiple mainboards with the same chipset) is almost infeasible. That's why coreboot has "targets" which are configurations specifying the exact chipset and each oddball mainboard setting. A target not exactly matching your mainboard is very unlikely to work.
I know that I have to edit a configuration file to specify the payload I wish to use, but I cannot find anything that tells me wether or not I have to configure Coreboot for the specific chipset on the target mainboard.
There are a few build tutorials in our wiki for various boards and I hope some of them can give you an insight into how building a particular target works.
I'm keen to help out even if only by testing on different platforms.
We're a team consisting of hardware specialists and software specialists and a few of us specialize in both. I hope you feel welcome and stick around. We have plenty of exciting projects which can use help from electronics specialists like you.
Regards, Carl-Daniel