Hi Gergely,

Sorry, I didn´t know the PCI IDs are APU depending. I´m using an Athlon 5350.

Yes, the differences are minor. Only UART used and TTYS0_BASE address.

Thank you for clarifying the memory requirement. I didn´t see it in the manual :-( .

Maybe you can change the defaults for CONFIG_UART_FOR_CONSOLE=1 and CONFIG_TTYS0_BASE=0x2f8.

Actually, I only bought this board to have this port tested and working :-) . But, like you said,  it´s the ideal system for a HTPC.

I have a AM1M-A too. I think this board is (almost) identical. "Only" it has more PCIEs slots (it´s micro-atx)

Thank you for your work and your valuable help.

Best regards,

Eli


On 13/02/2018 6:57, Gergely Kiss wrote:
Hi,

taking a look at the diffs, I can't see any major difference. CONFIG_USE_BLOBS is y by default so setting it to y is not really useful. The only notable difference is that you used COM1 for console output instead of COM2 (which is the port soldered on-board). However, this does not seem to explain why you got "slow" output on your console. If the COM port number and the base address is specified incorrectly then you'd see no output, at all, so I'm unsure what the real issue was in your case and how you managed to fix it.

As for the PCI IDs of the VGA adapter, it can be different depending on what APU is installed. My installation uses the one that is set in Kconfig by default.

The requirement to place the DIMM to slot DIMM_A2 (the slot closest to the edge of the board) when only one module is present is noted in the vendor manual on page 1-7.

About changing the defaults in the board's Kconfig, I'm not sure what you mean, could you please clarify? I think changing the default VGA PCI ID does not make sense as the VGA controller is integrated to the APU so each APU model and revision might use different PIDs and I believe there's no point preferring one ID over the others. The one that I have included is for reference only which might need to be changed to match the APU installed (my installation uses a Sempron 3850 APU).

Anyway, I'm happy to see that you could finally make coreboot work on your board, it's good to known I'm not the only user of my port! :)

Regards,
Gergely

On 11 February 2018 at 12:26, Elisenda Cuadros <lists@e4l.es> wrote:

Hi Gergely,

Thank you for your config. Now I have coreboot + SeaBIOS perfectly working.

Console speed is now "normal" :-)

These are the changes between the two configs:

-------------

diff config_original.txt config_Gergely.txt
23c23
< # CONFIG_USE_BLOBS is not set
---
> CONFIG_USE_BLOBS=y
101c101
< CONFIG_UART_FOR_CONSOLE=0
---
> CONFIG_UART_FOR_CONSOLE=1
150c150
< CONFIG_POST_DEVICE=y
---
> # CONFIG_POST_DEVICE is not set
210c210
< CONFIG_TTYS0_BASE=0x3f8
---
> CONFIG_TTYS0_BASE=0x2f8
428,429d427
< # CONFIG_PCI_OPTION_ROM_RUN_REALMODE is not set
< # CONFIG_PCI_OPTION_ROM_RUN_YABEL is not set
431d428
< # CONFIG_VGA_TEXT_FRAMEBUFFER is not set
556c553
< # Serial port base address = 0x3f8
---
> # Serial port base address = 0x2f8
581,583d577
< CONFIG_POST_DEVICE_NONE=y
< # CONFIG_POST_DEVICE_LPC is not set
< # CONFIG_POST_DEVICE_PCI_PCIE is not set

--------------

I made some tweaks to the configuration, added VGA output before payload, a nice bootsplash, etc..

Other considerations:

VGA Device PCI IDs are 1002,9830 (The default 1002,9836 does not get output).

Memory has to be located firstly on second slot (yellow DIMM_A2). If not you get AGESA_FATAL_ERROR. I only have one module.

Please, find attached a working config.txt and console.log. Coreboot revision is 4.7-294-g2db6fbc47b.

If you verify these changes are working for you is it possible to change the defaults in Kconfig?

Thank you very much.

Best regards,

-- Eli



On 11/02/18 00:07, Gergely Kiss wrote:
Strange, the log you shared looked less verbose to me than expected but seems like I was wrong. Anyway, you might find an example on a full debug log here [1].

I have a small build script I use to build coreboot for my board, please find it attached.

The version currently running on my box is 4.6-2554-ga1b4c94.

[1] https://www.coreboot.org/Board:asus/am1i-a#Bootlog

On 10 February 2018 at 23:18, Elisenda Cuadros <lists@e4l.es> wrote:

Thank you for your kind reply Gergely.

I think the cable is not the problem, I have been using it for years and it's intact.

I am using a usb dongle but not a cheap one. Tomorrow I will try with another cable and a real COM port. Just to be 100% sure.

Console is fast at the very first time (just the "normal") but after two seconds it becomes extremely slow.

Please, can you say me which is the git revision you are using?

The console log I attached is from a SPEW debug level, not corresponding with the config.. I tried several configs today :-) .

Is it possible to share your config with me?

Best regards,

Eli


On 10/02/18 21:44, Gergely Kiss wrote:
Hi Eli,

I've been using Coreboot on my board for several weeks, it is serving as an HTPC running 24/7 and it's working perfectly stable which suggests the firmware should be free of bugs. It is likely that you are facing some configuration or hardware issue here.

I didn't see any issues with the serial output while working with the board once the SuperIO chip started to work. Make sure the cable you use is intact and try to attach it to another machine. At the time I was working with my board, I used a Dell Port Replicator with a native COM port so I could use a standard null-modem cable and it was working flawlessly. In case you use a USB serial adapter, try replacing it or attach the serial cable directly to a COM port if you have one available.

Also, please enable debug_level=Spew as it seems the console log you attached comes from a less verbose setting and therefore it's not as useful as it should be.

Note that the VBIOS image is executed by SeaBIOS which means you won't see anything on your display until the payload is executed.

If all else fails, you can still attach a POST debug module to the LPC header of the board [1] which can help a lot to find out where the boot process hangs.

Feel free to contact me if you need some more help or information, I'm happy to assist!

Regards,
Gergely

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGGqsWx3-1c

On 10 February 2018 at 18:17, Elisenda Cuadros <lists@e4l.es> wrote:
Hello,

I'm trying to use Coreboot in an Asus AM1I-A board recently ported by Gergely Kiss (thank you!).

I am using the default config settings and added vga rom extracted with UEFITool from the vendor bios.

After flashing and booting I get no output from vga.

Serial console is extremely slow too (30 minutes to write the log)

I attach the coreboot console log, config and cbfs.txt.

Any hints?

Thanks in advance.

Best regards,

-- Eli