Here is my new board. Can coreboot be implemented on it?

[Kfir Lavi]

Hi,
Attached
lspci -vvvnn
dmidecode

I'm considering developing coreboot for this platform.
Last time I asked this question in gentoo-embedded mailing lists,
Peter said it would take 8 months to develop.
http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/gentoo/embedded/223304#223304
...
For an experienced coreboot developer I would estimate an absolute
minimum of eight man-months of work. This assumes that Intel NDAs and
document retrieval requests are processed instantly. It took 9 months
just to get NDAs processed for the coreboot developer who went
through that process. On the other hand, one Intel FAE I talked to
mentioned only weeks needed in some of his projects.
...

I don't have 8 months for start and I'm really not an experienced
coreboot developer, so I want you to look again on the attached files,
so maybe it could be easier then Peter initially stated.

Regards,
Kfir

Here is my new board. Can coreboot be implemented on it?

[Peter Stuge]

Kfir Lavi wrote:
> I'm considering developing coreboot for this platform.

Well, ok..
> Last time I asked this question in gentoo-embedded mailing lists,
> Peter said it would take 8 months to develop.
> http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/gentoo/embedded/223304#223304
> ...
> For an experienced coreboot developer I would estimate an absolute
> minimum of eight man-months of work. This assumes that Intel NDAs and
> document retrieval requests are processed instantly. It took 9 months
> just to get NDAs processed for the coreboot developer who went
> through that process. On the other hand, one Intel FAE I talked to
> mentioned only weeks needed in some of his projects.
> ...
>
> I don't have 8 months for start and I'm really not an experienced
> coreboot developer, so I want you to look again on the attached files,
> so maybe it could be easier then Peter initially stated.

I didn't make that up. And do not overlook the process of acquiring
NDAs and documentation from Intel. Since the chipset is not supported
you have the worst case scenario ahead of you. And you'd have to
spend some time learning about firmware development in general if you
haven't recently done work in this area. Every new chipset generation
adds more stuff..
> Manufacturer: Kontron Embedded Modules GmbH
> Product Name: ETXexpress-PC
> Version: Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU     L9400  @ 1.86GHz
> 00:00.0 Host bridge [0600]: Intel Corporation Mobile 4 Series Chipset Memory Controller Hub [8086:2a40] (rev 07)

The chipset is not supported at all and requires new support to be
written.

I would, again, recommend looking at hardware which is already
supported.

//Peter

Here is my new board. Can coreboot be implemented on it?

[Kfir Lavi]

On Thu, Jan 13, 2011 at 3:32 PM, Peter Stuge  wrote:
> Kfir Lavi wrote:
> > I'm considering developing coreboot for this platform.
>
> Well, ok..
> > Last time I asked this question in gentoo-embedded mailing lists,
> > Peter said it would take 8 months to develop.
> > http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/gentoo/embedded/223304#223304
> > ...
> > For an experienced coreboot developer I would estimate an absolute
> > minimum of eight man-months of work. This assumes that Intel NDAs and
> > document retrieval requests are processed instantly. It took 9 months
> > just to get NDAs processed for the coreboot developer who went
> > through that process. On the other hand, one Intel FAE I talked to
> > mentioned only weeks needed in some of his projects.
> > ...
> >
> > I don't have 8 months for start and I'm really not an experienced
> > coreboot developer, so I want you to look again on the attached files,
> > so maybe it could be easier then Peter initially stated.
>
> I didn't make that up. And do not overlook the process of acquiring
> NDAs and documentation from Intel. Since the chipset is not supported
> you have the worst case scenario ahead of you. And you'd have to
> spend some time learning about firmware development in general if you
> haven't recently done work in this area. Every new chipset generation
> adds more stuff..
> > Manufacturer: Kontron Embedded Modules GmbH
> > Product Name: ETXexpress-PC
> > Version: Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU     L9400  @ 1.86GHz
> > 00:00.0 Host bridge [0600]: Intel Corporation Mobile 4 Series Chipset
>
> Memory Controller Hub [8086:2a40] (rev 07)
>
> The chipset is not supported at all and requires new support to be
> written.
>
> I would, again, recommend looking at hardware which is already
> supported.
>
> //Peter

Thanks Peter for your prompt response.
So I understand that copy and paste from existing code will not help here?

Thanks,
Kfir

Here is my new board. Can coreboot be implemented on it?

[Peter Stuge]

Kfir Lavi wrote:
> > > 00:00.0 Host bridge [0600]: Intel Corporation Mobile 4 Series Chipset Memory Controller Hub [8086:2a40] (rev 07)

..
> > The chipset is not supported at all and requires new support to be
> > written.
> >
> > I would, again, recommend looking at hardware which is already
> > supported.
>
> Thanks Peter for your prompt response.

You're welcome.
> So I understand that copy and paste from existing code will not
> help here?

Correct. You need the documentation and quite possibly also some
reverse engineering to create a working firmware. You can also
reverse engineer away the need for documentation, but that always
takes (much) longer.

Of course you can try to simply run some existing code, but it's a
little like compiling code for the wrong ISA. The registers are not
the same, so the existing init code does not make sense on another
hardware. Sometimes if the components happen to be similar you may
have limited success, but it is difficult to measure success until
e.g. a serial port or USB debug communications channel is working..

//Peter

Here is my new board. Can coreboot be implemented on it?

[Neo The User]

I would like to recommend an AMD 785 board. Specifically the GIGABYTE GA-MA785GM-US2H, as its only $70 ($85 when not on sale) USD which isn't exactly that much for a relatively good motherboard.

The board doesn't work out of the box with coreboot with similar boards selected nor officially supported by coreboot at all, however you can use 99% of the code for the MA785GMT-UD3H by GIGABYTE and edit devicetree.cb and Kconfig a bit and it works just fine, but only with 1GB of DDR2 memory (just like the ASUS M4A785-M.) SeaBIOS crashes otherwise.

If you want to do coreboot work, you can try writing a fix for that, that way you would actually hit 2 birds with 1 stone ;)

This does mean that an AMD Fam10 series CPU would have to be at hand though and I know the original poster mentioned an Intel chipset...

-Alec

--- On Thu, 1/13/11, Peter Stuge  wrote:
> The chipset is not supported at all and requires new
> support to be
> written.
>
> I would, again, recommend looking at hardware which is
> already
> supported.