Thanks Peter.
Brian Milliron wrote:
Can you elaborate on what factors determine whether setting up coreboot on a previously unsupported laptop takes days or years?
Mainboards are more or less modified reference designs for a given platform, where platform means the combination of Intel or AMD chips intended to be used together.
coreboot supports several or even many platforms, but not all, and more than likely the support for each platform covers only what is required for the supported mainboards using that platform.
I see an option for an Intel Cometlake reference board in the menuconfig. Does that mean the platform is supported?
If your platform is supported to some degree but your specific mainboard is not then you have to understand the exact details of all differences between your mainboard and the general platform support in coreboot.
Maybe there is no code for things you require or maybe it's there but you must correctly describe how your hardware differs from a reference design or one particular supported mainboard.
Those differences are usually never well-documented, are never purposely published and are quite unlikely to ever leak. Leaked schematics can be helpful, but may not always suffice.
This means another pile of unknowns to first discover and then study in depth.
It has previously been suggested to me to use the inteltool to get information about the GPIOs which I have done. Is this all that is needed or is there more? I ask because I have no access to proprietary board schematics or other documentation, just the tools I can find on github or in coreboot itself. If that isn't going to give me the info I need, I will need to return this laptop and get another.