Hi all,
I think it is time to finally get new FM2 board! I have in mind some version of the F2A85-V PRO. Best would be to coordinate bit the efforts and choose some board which is long term supported. Also, everything costs quite some money and it would be nice if maybe someone already owns it to get some lspci/flash dumps etc in advance.
So far I have learned:
1) it has socketed BIOS 2) there seems to be some hw way how to unbrick that, but question is if it will accept our images
USB BIOS Flashback - Easy, worry-free USB BIOS
I suspect it is done by some 8051 controller, possibly some of those chips: http://detail.zol.com.cn/picture_index_975/index9747187_0_p336189.shtml
Looks like independent of any other chips, it could be cool feature for coreboot users.
3) it has serial port 4) it has NCT6779D which has no public datasheet 5) I was able to decompress the EFI firmware (skip first 2KB) with the bios_extract with some enhancements for compressed volumes. I think I got this from Patrick? I found there at least one 8051 firmware which looks like it is providing the EPU function. I suspect this runs inside southbridge, because the usual AMD signature is wiped with "xxxxxxxx" at 0x2000 ;) I think this can be a PITA but I dont know if it will work without this. Or if we would have to provide a way how to include that in the resulting image. I did not find a decompressed version of this fw. I suspect it lives iniside the flash after first flashing or so...
5) some of firmware files are quite funny and include cryptographic keys for microsoft and canonical also, it seems the "secure part" of the image updater is packed with UPX and this is then used by flashers (maybe extra other SMI layer is involved I dont know) (look for ASEX_update_bios_firmware does the trick)
All in all, I'm nearly convinced I will try to do it, but of course it is hard not to imagine some showstoper and all the money invested to new coreboot hw as wasted.
Thanks Rudolf