Thanks for all the great info once again! Just wanted to follow up and say I put the order in and it's on the way now. I was unable to find the ASMB4 or 5 though so ended up getting an ASMB6 for now that I'll look into adding OpenBMC support for. The Broadcom NIC firmware sounds very interesting and something I'll likely at least take a stab at after I get my feet wet with this first port.
On 2018-12-12 23:26, Taiidan@gmx.com wrote:
On 12/12/2018 09:59 PM, Ed Hau wrote:
Thanks for all the help so far after digging for the past day I was thinking about picking up the KCMR-D12 as you had recommended and a set of AMD OPTERON 4280 to go with it. This has the AST-2050 for the openBMC port that I am also interested in. Just wanted one more round of sanity checks before putting in the order.
Yah go for it! it is almost identical to the KCMA-D8 it just has more RAM slots and a different PCI-e configuration. Should be an easy first port and one can gain experience :D Let us know if you need help!
Note OpenBMC needs an ASMB4 or ASMB5 firmware module (you use flashrom to over-write the crappy exploit ridden OEM firmware) if the board doesn't come with one they go for around $30 on fleabay.
After that if you wish to continue porting stuff I suggest a TYAN board such as the dual northbridge/sas S8225, the quad socket/sas S8812 or the affordable sas S8010 (just not the crappy SR5650 northbridge versions that lack the proper amount of PCI-e slots)
best c32 cpu - 4386 or if you don't want to have to use microcode updates the 4284 (4280 slightly slower/cheaper) I max out new new video games in a VM via IOMMU-GFX of an RX580 8GB with my 4386 equivilant 6328 so you can use this as a libre gaming pc as well - there are a variety of great AAA DRM free linux games on gog (email for reccs)
Something else that might interest you and what is a high priority firmware wise is a FOSS Broadcom NIC firmware replacement for the nic chipset that is on the blackbird/talos if you have what it takes the first person to make one gets a free talos 2 workstation valued at five thousand bucks. You can get PCI-e nics with the chipset so you don't actually need one of the boards to develop for it. It would be great to have a non-intel blob free nic since then one doesn't have to support a competitor and further ME development by getting intel nics (thats why they chose the broadcom one as it is the most promising due to a litany of documentation) and it is the only thing in the way to getting RYF for the OpenPOWER stuff afaik.
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