* Philippe LeCavalier support@plecavalier.com [110420 15:07]:
Excerpts from Stefan Reinauer's message of Tue Apr 19 21:30:35 -0400 2011:
- Philippe LeCavalier support@plecavalier.com [110419 20:22]:
[..]
If your BIOS works for you, you should consider keeping it.
Porting coreboot to a new mainboard is a significant effort and you will have to make sure you have ways to recover from failure (i.e. get your external flash writer and/or soldering iron ready)
hm. I see. I was hoping the worst case would be flashing it back to the original BIOS. A soldering gun is a bit extreme considering my current setup works just fine.
Yes, the worst case is flashing back the original BIOS. However, you might have to do that without the system booting - at all.
To ensure I fully comprehend the risk here...Backing up the BIOS isn't my insurance policy; I'd actually have to replace the chip? Once I've got a clear understanding of the worst-case scenario I'll feel stronger about making a decision.
You have to be able to reprogram the chip. If your chip is PLCC32 and socketed, no soldering is required. If you have a SPI chip and a dediprog or bus pirate, you should get away without soldering. However, there is a reasonably big chance that, on your first try, you will not produce a coreboot image that is able to load an OS on a previously unsupported system.
Stefan