On Wednesday, October 13, 2010 06:10:45 am Nasa wrote:
*snip*
IBASE MB899 Intel 945GM Chipset GMCH: 82945GM 1466-pin Micro-FCBGA ICH7M:82801GBM 652-pin MBGA.
I just looked in our tree and I see src/mainboard/mb899. Anyone know how well it's supported?
While I am very capable of building software out of SVN (been doing that for mythtv, openmobile, etc) and linux kernel, I have not played with pulling individual chips, like a BIOS. So I don't know anything about acquiring and/or replacing one. But I can be somewhat adventureous...
Is the following your board? http://www.ibase.com.tw/MB899_500.jpg
If so, the bios chip might be the SST thing near the white connector in the bottom left quadrant of the board. I think it's an LPC style chip. Having another chip to flash instead of that one would mean that you could keep your oringinal untouched. I think that usually those types of chips just pull right out.
Also, having an external flasher would be really useful in case you flash a bad image onto your chip and need to fix it.
wt
----- "Warren Turkal" wt@penguintechs.org wrote:
On Wednesday, October 13, 2010 06:10:45 am Nasa wrote:
*snip*
IBASE MB899 Intel 945GM Chipset GMCH: 82945GM 1466-pin Micro-FCBGA ICH7M:82801GBM 652-pin MBGA.
I just looked in our tree and I see src/mainboard/mb899. Anyone know how well it's supported?
While I am very capable of building software out of SVN (been doing
that
for mythtv, openmobile, etc) and linux kernel, I have not played
with
pulling individual chips, like a BIOS. So I don't know anything
about
acquiring and/or replacing one. But I can be somewhat
adventureous...
Is the following your board? http://www.ibase.com.tw/MB899_500.jpg
Yes,
That the one.
If so, the bios chip might be the SST thing near the white connector in the bottom left quadrant of the board. I think it's an LPC style chip. Having another chip to flash instead of that one would mean that you could keep your oringinal untouched. I think that usually those types of chips just pull right out.
If that one does just pull out; could I make a copy of the running bios, pull the chip (from a running machine...), and copy the old bios on to the new chip?
Also, having an external flasher would be really useful in case you flash a bad image onto your chip and need to fix it.
or would an external flasher be an easier solution?
wt
Thanks!
-- coreboot mailing list: coreboot@coreboot.org http://www.coreboot.org/mailman/listinfo/coreboot
Nasa wrote:
All that said, I was hoping to get pointed in the right direction to being able to install this in my motherboard. The specifics of the board (in case I misread the post) are(from manual):
IBASE MB899 Intel 945GM Chipset GMCH: 82945GM 1466-pin Micro-FCBGA ICH7M:82801GBM 652-pin MBGA.
Did you pick a particular CPU for the board, or did the CPU come already installed when you bought the board?
In general you're in luck because as was noted the board is supported by coreboot.
You will need a few things:
* Cross-over serial cable (AKA null modem) * Spare boot flash chips * Patience
You have to choose a payload for your coreboot build. coreboot does hardware init but does not include any code to boot your operating system. That second part is handled by a completely separate program, which is stored together with coreboot in the boot flash.
An easy first step might be to use SeaBIOS as payload. SeaBIOS is an open source legacy BIOS implementation, so your system should start just like before. Once everything is running well with coreboot+SeaBIOS you could move on and try to optimize the boot even further, using other payloads.
While I am very capable of building software out of SVN (been doing that for mythtv, openmobile, etc) and linux kernel,
Good. Note that coreboot and SeaBIOS both run before an operating system environment is available, and the toolchains shipped with many distributions have been patched so that they fail to correctly build such software. You can try using your regular toolchain, but if you have any trouble then it is recommended to build a reference toolchain and use that to build coreboot. After svn checkout of the coreboot tree, do:
cd util/crossgcc ./buildgcc cd ../.. rm -f .xcompile
The next time you run make in the coreboot directory it should pick up the toolchain built by buildgcc automatically. Check the contents of .xcompile to make sure.
I have not played with pulling individual chips, like a BIOS. So I don't know anything about acquiring and/or replacing one.
Note that BIOS is the software, not so much the flash chip it is stored in.
You will need replacement flash chips. They shouldn't cost more than a few USD and I recommend getting a few of them, so that you always have at least one backup of the factory BIOS that you can use if coreboot doesn't work straight away. (Sometimes it will, but better safe than sorry, if there's a problem you can't start the system anymore without a backup flash chip.)
Warren Turkal wrote:
the bios chip might be the SST thing near the white connector in the bottom left quadrant of the board.
Yes, that's correct. This package is called PLCC32, but only describes the physical format of the chip.
I think it's an LPC style chip.
Well, almost. It is connected to a bus which is electrically and protocol-wise compatible with LPC, but all Intel chipsets use their own memory read and write commands which are different from the LPC standard commands. The flash chip type is usually called FWH, Firmware Hub, since that is the name of Intel's own boot flash chips.
Look for a couple of compatible flash chips. Some current part numbers are:
8Mbit = 1Mbyte SST49LF008A-33-4C-NHE http://parts.digikey.com/1/parts/1904170-ic-flash-fwh-8mbit-33mhz-32plcc-sst...
16Mbit = 2Mbyte SST49LF016C-33-4C-NHE SST49LF016C-66-4C-NHE http://parts.digikey.com/1/parts/1904173-ic-flash-ser-lpc-16mbit-32plcc-sst4...
You can most likely use flashrom (flashrom.org, coreboot sibling project) to read the factory BIOS from the chip in a running system. You can then hotswap flash chips (prepare them with pushpin knobs first) in the running system, put a blank chip in, and write your first factory BIOS backup onto that. Then get the third flash chip, repeat the hotswap, and write a coreboot image with SeaBIOS onto that chip. Reboot and watch the seral port output on another computer, via the null modem cable.
//Peter
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Nasa -
Peter Stuge -
Warren Turkal