Which of these mini-ITX mainboards is best supported?

[U'll Be King Of The Stars]

Hello!

I am presently doing a massive hardware clearance and this includes 
selling (or giving away) many mainboards that are coreboot compatible.

I'm not super experienced with getting my hands dirty with coreboot 
development.  I am jumping in the deep end with these -- and a few other 
models -- and I would like to keep the boards of the model that are 
supported best by coreboot.

The boards I refer to are the following.  I have each of the following 
models in some quantity:

-   Intel D510MO (my personal favorite of this list)
-   Intel D945GCLF (and D945GCLF2, D945GCLF2D)
-   Intel D410PT (doesn't seem to be in current source tree)
-   Gigabyte GA-G41M-ES2L

Can somebody please advise?  As indicated I would like to keep the 
D510MO boards for coreboot hacking and experimenting, and for cluster 
builds.  But I heard somebody say the D510MO presently has issues (I 
don't know any more details than this at present and they weren't able 
to elaborate).

If there is a better choice of board to keep, while clearing out the 
others, I'd like to know.

But if the issue with the D510MO is of the nature that somebody like me 
(experienced software engineer; kind of new to coreboot) has a pretty 
good chance of fixing up to a high standard, please let me know!!

I'm hope to hear from somebody soon!  Thanks!!

Kind regards,

Andrew

[Peter Stuge]

U'll Be King Of The Stars wrote:
> Intel D510MO (my personal favorite of this list)
> Intel D945GCLF (and D945GCLF2, D945GCLF2D)

I have 945 bias. But it's mature, has received a lot of work, and I
would expect it to work well or be easy to fix.

//Peter

[Angel Pons]

Hi Andrew,

On Wed, Feb 3, 2021 at 11:46 PM U'll Be King Of The Stars
 wrote:
> Intel D410PT (doesn't seem to be in current source tree)

The D410PT and the D510MO use the same code. Support was added in
https://review.coreboot.org/20000 (which merely renames the Kconfig
option).

Best regards,
Angel

[Andrew Luke Nesbit]

On 04/02/2021 09:41, Angel Pons wrote:
> Hi Andrew,

Hi Angel,

Thanks for the reply.
> On Wed, Feb 3, 2021 at 11:46 PM U'll Be King Of The Stars
>  wrote:
> > Intel D410PT (doesn't seem to be in current source tree)
>
> The D410PT and the D510MO use the same code. Support was added in
> https://review.coreboot.org/20000 (which merely renames the Kconfig
> option).

I think I misunderstand something...

Are you saying that support for the D410PT came with support for the 
D510MO, but that recent source trees have removed explicit support for 
the D410PT for some reason?  I can't find any reference to D410PT in the 
latest source tree.

I'm still getting used to reading the coreboot source tree.  Maybe I'm 
doing this all wrong.

If you could please point to something additional that is informative, 
then that would be very helpful.

Andrew

[Angel Pons]

Hi Andrew,

On Fri, Feb 5, 2021 at 6:06 PM Andrew Luke Nesbit
 wrote:
> On 04/02/2021 09:41, Angel Pons wrote:
> > Hi Andrew,
>
> Hi Angel,
>
> Thanks for the reply.
> > On Wed, Feb 3, 2021 at 11:46 PM U'll Be King Of The Stars
> >  wrote:
> > > Intel D410PT (doesn't seem to be in current source tree)
> >
> > The D410PT and the D510MO use the same code. Support was added in
> > https://review.coreboot.org/20000 (which merely renames the Kconfig
> > option).
>
> I think I misunderstand something...
>
> Are you saying that support for the D410PT came with support for the
> D510MO, but that recent source trees have removed explicit support for
> the D410PT for some reason?  I can't find any reference to D410PT in the
> latest source tree.

If by "explicit" support you mean a dedicated mainboard folder or a
"BOARD_INTEL_D410PT" Kconfig option, there was never one to begin
with. The Gerrit change I linked merely added the model in the
user-visible text of the "BOARD_INTEL_D510MO" Kconfig option, which is
located in `src/mainboard/intel/d510mo/Kconfig.name`.

In other words, the same coreboot config works for both the Intel
D510MO and the Intel D410PT.
> I'm still getting used to reading the coreboot source tree.  Maybe I'm
> doing this all wrong.
>
> If you could please point to something additional that is informative,
> then that would be very helpful.
>
> Andrew

Best regards,
Angel

[U'll Be King Of The Stars]

On 04/02/2021 05:11, Peter Stuge wrote:
> U'll Be King Of The Stars wrote:
> > Intel D510MO (my personal favorite of this list)
> > Intel D945GCLF (and D945GCLF2, D945GCLF2D)
>
> I have 945 bias. But it's mature, has received a lot of work, and I
> would expect it to work well or be easy to fix.

Thank you Peter for your opinion.  I really value this (as well as 
Angel's information re: 410PT).

I've been preparing to get rid of many of these boards.  The ideas I had 
for them were as follows.  For example...

1.  A cluster of cheap, corebooted (or Librebooted) boards to experiment 
with computational benefits of clustering.  For various reasons, it was 
much more appealing to do this with corebooted boards.

2.  An interesting look at whether a hyperconverged storage structure is 
feasbible.

I was going to settle on the D510MO, but I heard some rumors that put me 
off.  I wish I could remember what these were, so I'll just forget I 
heard that there were rumors at all, and experiment with each model to 
get this started and help me decide what to keep and what not to keep... 
perhaps...

Selling these boards is a lot of effort and wouldn't bring in much money 
anyway.  I may instead simply experiment with all of them and find a 
compact way of packing the away those that aren't used.

Most of the hardware that is causing problems is large, heavy, unused 
old servers.

Andrew

[Mike Banon]

Hope you can find the way to keep or sell all these coreboot-supported
boards. Selling those which you don't personally need - shouldn't be
hard: since the CPUs are much more resilient than motherboards - there
should be a lot of old server's owners looking for a motherboard
replacement, and the coreboot support is a great selling point,
especially if you can preinstall a coreboot to their chips

On Sat, Feb 6, 2021 at 6:11 AM U'll Be King Of The Stars
 wrote:
> On 04/02/2021 05:11, Peter Stuge wrote:
> > U'll Be King Of The Stars wrote:
> > > Intel D510MO (my personal favorite of this list)
> > > Intel D945GCLF (and D945GCLF2, D945GCLF2D)
> >
> > I have 945 bias. But it's mature, has received a lot of work, and I
> > would expect it to work well or be easy to fix.
>
> Thank you Peter for your opinion.  I really value this (as well as
> Angel's information re: 410PT).
>
> I've been preparing to get rid of many of these boards.  The ideas I had
> for them were as follows.  For example...
> A cluster of cheap, corebooted (or Librebooted) boards to experiment
>
> with computational benefits of clustering.  For various reasons, it was
> much more appealing to do this with corebooted boards.
> An interesting look at whether a hyperconverged storage structure is
>
> feasbible.
>
> I was going to settle on the D510MO, but I heard some rumors that put me
> off.  I wish I could remember what these were, so I'll just forget I
> heard that there were rumors at all, and experiment with each model to
> get this started and help me decide what to keep and what not to keep...
> perhaps...
>
> Selling these boards is a lot of effort and wouldn't bring in much money
> anyway.  I may instead simply experiment with all of them and find a
> compact way of packing the away those that aren't used.
>
> Most of the hardware that is causing problems is large, heavy, unused
> old servers.
>
> Andrew
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