Dear coreboot community,
it is really amazing what happened in the last years and especially in the last months. A lot of people came – for me – out of nowhere and did great contributions. Also AMD did great with their latest contributions [1].
Today, Scott sent a patch to the list to support the board ASRock E350M1 [2, 3, 4]. If I am not mistaken there have been only a few cases, it could be the first, where such a *recent* consumer board is supported by coreboot. And that is the reason I am writing this message.
This also means that most of the computer magazines (online – at least in Europe – and print) have not yet published reviews and the board is not yet old enough to be considered by consumers. You guys have more experience than I on how these reviewer networks work, but is there an easy way to get these boards tested by these people with coreboot?
I came up with the following steps to be accomplished to reach that goal.
1. Contact ASRock. Does anyone have contacts at ASRock to get documentation or even hardware or man power? 2. Get Windows running. Scott wrote that Windows does not boot yet. Since the market share of Windows in the home desktop market is still the biggest, that would of course be a requirement. 3. Get GNU/Linux running. I think FLOSS users are more open to try new things. So to get to them, GNU/Linux should at least be able to boot. 4. Wiki page and feature list. A page in our Wiki [5] should be set up with detailed instructions on how to create an image, what features (ACPI, power management, suspend/resume, connectors, …) work and, when the patch is committed, what revision was tested. 5. Comparison with the vendor BIOS. People of course would only be interested if coreboot is superior to the vendor BIOS. And I would imagine that normal users would be most interested in boot time. Is coreboot faster? 6. Flashrom support or “precompiled” images. To make it easy for the reviewers and early adopters flashing using Flashrom should work or precompiled images should be made available, if it is legally possible, and even flash chips offered or send to the reviewers which they can easily plug into the board and start testing. Is there a foundation (e. g. FSF), organization or cooperation (e. g. Google) which could sponsor to buy like 200(?) spare flash chips, which then can be programmed? What flash chips are compatible with this board? 7. Contact everybody. When all of the above has been accomplished, the magazines, reviewing sites, news sites, LUGs, communities should be informed. Magazines get the chips send to and consumers can order them from a coreboot developer.
Do you think that is a feasible roadmap? If yes, a lot of testing and work needs to be done and Scott, of course, cannot do that alone. So people willing to help, should get a this board, spare flash chips, and start mostly testing. I am not a developer, so I could not help to improve the support, but I could test and maybe even create a live image to flash that image from an USB storage device.
It looks difficult though to get this board [6].
Another chicken and egg problem is, if this announcement should be made public outside of the coreboot community only after support is complete or before, i. e., are there communities (e. g. FSF) or project developers which would help to support this effort?
Unfortunately CeBit is going to already start next week, so we will not be able to show the new support off there.
I am looking forward to your thoughts. Thanks,
Paul
[1] http://www.coreboot.org/News#2011.2F2.2F14_AMD_submits_coreboot_support_for_... [2] http://www.coreboot.org/pipermail/coreboot/2011-February/063737.html [3] http://www.asrock.com/mb/overview.asp?Model=E350M1 [4] http://notabs.org/pictures/ASRock-E350M1/ [5] http://www.coreboot.org/Welcome_to_coreboot [6] http://www.coreboot.org/pipermail/coreboot/2011-February/063757.html
Hi Paul,
On Thu, Feb 24, 2011 at 6:18 AM, Paul Menzel paulepanter@users.sourceforge.net wrote:
Dear coreboot community,
it is really amazing what happened in the last years and especially in the last months. A lot of people came – for me – out of nowhere and did great contributions. Also AMD did great with their latest contributions [1].
Today, Scott sent a patch to the list to support the board ASRock E350M1 [2, 3, 4]. If I am not mistaken there have been only a few cases, it could be the first, where such a *recent* consumer board is supported by coreboot. And that is the reason I am writing this message.
This also means that most of the computer magazines (online – at least in Europe – and print) have not yet published reviews and the board is not yet old enough to be considered by consumers. You guys have more experience than I on how these reviewer networks work, but is there an easy way to get these boards tested by these people with coreboot?
I came up with the following steps to be accomplished to reach that goal.
1. Contact ASRock. Does anyone have contacts at ASRock to get documentation or even hardware or man power? 2. Get Windows running. Scott wrote that Windows does not boot yet. Since the market share of Windows in the home desktop market is still the biggest, that would of course be a requirement. 3. Get GNU/Linux running. I think FLOSS users are more open to try new things. So to get to them, GNU/Linux should at least be able to boot. 4. Wiki page and feature list. A page in our Wiki [5] should be set up with detailed instructions on how to create an image, what features (ACPI, power management, suspend/resume, connectors, …) work and, when the patch is committed, what revision was tested. 5. Comparison with the vendor BIOS. People of course would only be interested if coreboot is superior to the vendor BIOS. And I would imagine that normal users would be most interested in boot time. Is coreboot faster? 6. Flashrom support or “precompiled” images. To make it easy for the reviewers and early adopters flashing using Flashrom should work or precompiled images should be made available, if it is legally possible, and even flash chips offered or send to the reviewers which they can easily plug into the board and start testing. Is there a foundation (e. g. FSF), organization or cooperation (e. g. Google) which could sponsor to buy like 200(?) spare flash chips, which then can be programmed? What flash chips are compatible with this board? 7. Contact everybody. When all of the above has been accomplished, the magazines, reviewing sites, news sites, LUGs, communities should be informed. Magazines get the chips send to and consumers can order them from a coreboot developer.
Do you think that is a feasible roadmap? If yes, a lot of testing and work needs to be done and Scott, of course, cannot do that alone. So people willing to help, should get a this board, spare flash chips, and start mostly testing. I am not a developer, so I could not help to improve the support, but I could test and maybe even create a live image to flash that image from an USB storage device.
It looks difficult though to get this board [6].
Another chicken and egg problem is, if this announcement should be made public outside of the coreboot community only after support is complete or before, i. e., are there communities (e. g. FSF) or project developers which would help to support this effort?
Unfortunately CeBit is going to already start next week, so we will not be able to show the new support off there.
I am looking forward to your thoughts. Thanks,
Paul
[1] http://www.coreboot.org/News#2011.2F2.2F14_AMD_submits_coreboot_support_for_... [2] http://www.coreboot.org/pipermail/coreboot/2011-February/063737.html [3] http://www.asrock.com/mb/overview.asp?Model=E350M1 [4] http://notabs.org/pictures/ASRock-E350M1/ [5] http://www.coreboot.org/Welcome_to_coreboot [6] http://www.coreboot.org/pipermail/coreboot/2011-February/063757.html
These are all great points. I am also motivated to market coreboot better. AMD and Sage are putting effort into press release and blog postings this week and around Embedded World next week. I think that your plan is well thought out and would certainly help market coreboot. You have highlighted some key areas, and I like that you have highlighted things that are not specifically development. Coreboot developers are pretty good about writing code and making systems work. We are not so good about marketing and documentation etc.
It is difficult for systems developers to evaluate coreboot without investing a lot of time, in getting, building, flashing, etc. I like the idea of some precompiled images that can be downloaded and flashed on a system with some confidence that they "just work". There is still inherent risk that board versions have made something incompatible etc. This effort and risk is one reason that the cost of entry into coreboot is so high.
I'm excited that you see the potential of coreboot and have thought about better ways to help get it recognized and help make it a viable choice for system developers, ultimately giving users the choice of the software they want to run. I think that the steps you outline are not serial, but can be done in parallel. I also think that coreboot would see benefit from doing any of the points you have made. If you were to take the lead on one or more, I think others would follow and cooperate.It just requires a little momentum. I think that updating our wiki with fresh and accurate information would be a great place to start. I want to start cross-posting the news, blogs, and press releases about coreboot this week on the coreboot wiki news page.
Is there one thing on your list that you could lead?
Marc
Dear Marc,
Am Donnerstag, den 24.02.2011, 09:36 -0700 schrieb Marc Jones:
On Thu, Feb 24, 2011 at 6:18 AM, Paul Menzel wrote:
Dear coreboot community,
it is really amazing what happened in the last years and especially in the last months. A lot of people came – for me – out of nowhere and did great contributions. Also AMD did great with their latest contributions [1].
Today, Scott sent a patch to the list to support the board ASRock E350M1 [2, 3, 4]. If I am not mistaken there have been only a few cases, it could be the first, where such a *recent* consumer board is supported by coreboot. And that is the reason I am writing this message.
This also means that most of the computer magazines (online – at least in Europe – and print) have not yet published reviews and the board is not yet old enough to be considered by consumers. You guys have more experience than I on how these reviewer networks work, but is there an easy way to get these boards tested by these people with coreboot?
I came up with the following steps to be accomplished to reach that goal.
1. Contact ASRock. Does anyone have contacts at ASRock to get documentation or even hardware or man power? 2. Get Windows running. Scott wrote that Windows does not boot yet. Since the market share of Windows in the home desktop market is still the biggest, that would of course be a requirement. 3. Get GNU/Linux running. I think FLOSS users are more open to try new things. So to get to them, GNU/Linux should at least be able to boot. 4. Wiki page and feature list. A page in our Wiki [5] should be set up with detailed instructions on how to create an image, what features (ACPI, power management, suspend/resume, connectors, …) work and, when the patch is committed, what revision was tested. 5. Comparison with the vendor BIOS. People of course would only be interested if coreboot is superior to the vendor BIOS. And I would imagine that normal users would be most interested in boot time. Is coreboot faster? 6. Flashrom support or “precompiled” images. To make it easy for the reviewers and early adopters flashing using Flashrom should work or precompiled images should be made available, if it is legally possible, and even flash chips offered or send to the reviewers which they can easily plug into the board and start testing. Is there a foundation (e. g. FSF), organization or cooperation (e. g. Google) which could sponsor to buy like 200(?) spare flash chips, which then can be programmed? What flash chips are compatible with this board? 7. Contact everybody. When all of the above has been accomplished, the magazines, reviewing sites, news sites, LUGs, communities should be informed. Magazines get the chips send to and consumers can order them from a coreboot developer.Do you think that is a feasible roadmap? If yes, a lot of testing and work needs to be done and Scott, of course, cannot do that alone. So people willing to help, should get a this board, spare flash chips, and start mostly testing. I am not a developer, so I could not help to improve the support, but I could test and maybe even create a live image to flash that image from an USB storage device.
It looks difficult though to get this board [6].
Another chicken and egg problem is, if this announcement should be made public outside of the coreboot community only after support is complete or before, i. e., are there communities (e. g. FSF) or project developers which would help to support this effort?
Unfortunately CeBit is going to already start next week, so we will not be able to show the new support off there.
I am looking forward to your thoughts. Thanks,
Paul
[1] http://www.coreboot.org/News#2011.2F2.2F14_AMD_submits_coreboot_support_for_... [2] http://www.coreboot.org/pipermail/coreboot/2011-February/063737.html [3] http://www.asrock.com/mb/overview.asp?Model=E350M1 [4] http://notabs.org/pictures/ASRock-E350M1/ [5] http://www.coreboot.org/Welcome_to_coreboot [6] http://www.coreboot.org/pipermail/coreboot/2011-February/063757.html
These are all great points. I am also motivated to market coreboot better. AMD and Sage are putting effort into press release and blog postings this week and around Embedded World next week.
[…]
I'm excited that you see the potential of coreboot and have thought about better ways to help get it recognized and help make it a viable choice for system developers, ultimately giving users the choice of the software they want to run. I think that the steps you outline are not serial, but can be done in parallel. I also think that coreboot would see benefit from doing any of the points you have made. If you were to take the lead on one or more, I think others would follow and cooperate.It just requires a little momentum. I think that updating our wiki with fresh and accurate information would be a great place to start. I want to start cross-posting the news, blogs, and press releases about coreboot this week on the coreboot wiki news page.
please remember to also let this aggregated by [7].
Is there one thing on your list that you could lead?
Well I could try to contact ASRock and for example the German Linux Magazin [8] or Tom’s Hardware [9], that are points 1. and partly 7..
In my opinion it is very important though that the coreboot support of that board is comparable to the one by the vendor BIOS before announcements are made, so that one can show a video or comparison charts of the boot time and so on. That would make people talk about coreboot and create demand. So hopefully Scott will be able to get Windows and GNU/Linux booting soon.
Unfortunately I still cannot find the board ASRock E350M1 in stock anywhere in Germany.
One question, to make this message even longer, is the problems Scott is having to boot Windows just due to the board port (lack of documentation(?)) or does the generic new AMD “chipset” code also needs more work, so that it would be better to wait for another board where then coreboot could be ported to more quickly after Scott found the “shortcomings” of the chipset code?
Thanks,
Paul
[7] http://blogs.coreboot.org/ [8] http://www.linux-magazin.de/ [9] http://www.tomshardware.com/
Am Samstag, 26. Februar 2011, 11:19:23 schrieb Paul Menzel:
One question, to make this message even longer, is the problems Scott is having to boot Windows just due to the board port (lack of documentation(?)) or does the generic new AMD “chipset” code also needs more work, so that it would be better to wait for another board where then coreboot could be ported to more quickly after Scott found the “shortcomings” of the chipset code?
It's most likely our support for various tables (the ACPI family, mptable, pir, ...). These are highly manual for now, and it would reduce the time to market for a board with supported components if these could be autogenerated somehow (and in a way that can be validated on all kinds of OS variants/versions and apply for a lot of boards automatically).
Windows is very picky about these tables, and fails if they're not perfect. Linux is (by necessity) more tolerant with crappy data, as the non-windows parts of ACPI are often downright broken.
Patrick
Paul Menzel wrote...
]In my opinion it is very important though that the coreboot support of ]that board is comparable to the one by the vendor BIOS
This is where it is easy to underestimate the work that goes into a BIOS. A tier 1 BIOS can take 10+ man years of BIOS development time, even after paying an IBV (independent BIOS vendor such as AMI or Insyde) huge $$$ for their reference BIOS. ASRock probably did not spend 10 BIOS man years, but maybe one or two. Their AMI Aptio UEFI BIOS has many setup features that not found in coreboot+seabios. Some are generic and will eventually find their way into the coreboot or seabios code base. Others, such as over clocking controls, take a lot of customization work. Schematics and NDA documents are also needed. I didn't even try the PCI express slot. It is unlikely to work without some additional BIOS code. The AMD reference code will go a long way towards simplifying S3 power state support, but adding it could still be a large job. Supporting hardware monitor features takes a lot of work. The vendor BIOS has all of this and lots more. For some of us, these features are mostly unimportant and coreboot+ seabios is adaquate today.
] before ]announcements are made, so that one can show a video or comparison ]charts of the boot time and so on. That would make people talk about ]coreboot and create demand. So hopefully Scott will be able to get ]Windows and GNU/Linux booting soon.
Getting Windows and other operating systems to boot is not a huge job. But it does take many hours of debug and unfortunately I have to catch up on some other work.
]Unfortunately I still cannot find the board ASRock E350M1 in stock ]anywhere in Germany.
I think we will find it is easy to get coreboot going on any board that uses this processor and south bridge. Hopefully additional E350 coreboot ports will appear soon.
]One question, to make this message even longer, is the problems Scott is ]having to boot Windows just due to the board port (lack of ]documentation(?)) or does the generic new AMD "chipset" code also needs ]more work, so that it would be better to wait for another board where ]then coreboot could be ported to more quickly after Scott found the ]"shortcomings" of the chipset code?
The chipset code is in fine shape. AMD gave us everything, and then some. To get Windows working takes nothing more than debug time. WinPE 3.0 boots, so it is pretty close.
Thanks, Scott
]Thanks, ] ]Paul
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Marc Jones -
Patrick Georgi -
Paul Menzel -
Scott Duplichan