SeaBIOS with native graphics initialization?

[Piotr Kubaj]

Hi all,

I'm currently running Libreboot 20150518 on ThinkPad X200, but I'd like 
to switch to Coreboot (the newest stable version, 4.4). The reason is 
that Libreboot seems to provide only one configuration and its build 
system seems difficult to understand in comparison to Coreboot.

I'd like to use SeaBIOS (as opposed to Libreboot's GRUB) as payload - I 
also would like to have coreinfo, memtest and nvramcui so that it all 
provides kind of BIOS-like menu.

Is that possible using native graphics initialization without vgabios? 
There are some recent references that it's possible.

I'm asking because, although I have flashing equipment (I've flashed my 
X200 myself), the flashing took a lot of time, because of too long 
wires, interferences from PSU etc. I don't want to be forced to flash it 
again, so I want to be absolutely sure before I switch.

[Gerd Hoffmann]

Hi,
> Is that possible using native graphics initialization without vgabios?
> There are some recent references that it's possible.

CONFIG_VGA_COREBOOT=y in seabios.

That'll give you a vgabios which does vga text mode emulation on top of
a coreboot framebuffer.

cheers,
  Gerd

[Piotr Kubaj]

Thanks,

does CONFIG_VGA_BIOS also need to be set in Coreboot config file?

On 05/31/16 09:08, Gerd Hoffmann wrote:
> Hi,
> > Is that possible using native graphics initialization without vgabios?
> > There are some recent references that it's possible.
>
> CONFIG_VGA_COREBOOT=y in seabios.
>
> That'll give you a vgabios which does vga text mode emulation on top of
> a coreboot framebuffer.
>
> cheers,
>   Gerd

[Gerd Hoffmann]

On Di, 2016-05-31 at 15:35 +0200, Piotr Kubaj wrote:
> Thanks,
>
> does CONFIG_VGA_BIOS also need to be set in Coreboot config file?

Yes (or manually add the rom via cbfstool).
But CONFIG_VGA_ROM_RUN must be "n".

cheers,
  Gerd

[Piotr Kubaj]

Thanks,

unfortunately, it didn't work :( I guess something is not wrong,
although it's not completely broken - while when I should see SeaBIOS I
can see only a turned off screen, after a few seconds my OS loads, so I
still can use software flash. Can you look at my configs and write what
is wrong?

Thanks,
Piotr Kubaj

[Piotr Kubaj]

I should also mention that although I have
CONFIG_MAINBOARD_DO_NATIVE_VGA_INIT now, when I had it on previously,
the result was about the same, except that before booting OS the screen
was on (but it didn't display anything).

On 06/02/2016 20:09, Piotr Kubaj wrote:
> Thanks,
>
> unfortunately, it didn't work :( I guess something is not wrong,
> although it's not completely broken - while when I should see SeaBIOS I
> can see only a turned off screen, after a few seconds my OS loads, so I
> still can use software flash. Can you look at my configs and write what
> is wrong?
>
> Thanks,
> Piotr Kubaj