So, you want to try coreboot? Here are a few hints

[mrnuke]

Installing coreboot can be an either enthralling or appalling experience. If 
you're new to coreboot and want to give it a try, following a few simple steps 
can save you a ton of time and frustration.

Ask around first
================

Let the "coreboot people" know you want to try coreboot on board 'xyz'. You 
may find someone with the same board, who may be able to give you hints on 
flashing. This is especially useful on laptops, where a brick will most likely 
result in the need for disassembly to access the flash chip, and external 
flashing.

Prebuilt images
===============

If you're lucky enough to find someone with the same board as you, they may be 
able to provide a pre-built coreboot image. This eliminates issues where 
flashing is done correctly, but a mysterious bug prevents the system for 
booting.

Binary coreboot distributions
=============================

Sometimes people get together and create tested binaries binaries for a subset 
of boards. They can give you help on flashing, and making sure your board 
works as expected. This is by far the best way to try coreboot.

If you have a Lenovo X60, give the libreboot[1] guys a holler. That's libre-
boot, not lib-reboot.

You may also be able to find, for a fee, prebuilt binaries for your board from 
Sage Electronics' SageBios[2]. I am not sure how Sage conducts its business, 
so Marc, feel free to correct me on this one.

[1] http://libreboot.org/
[2] http://www.se-eng.com/sage-bios.html

[ron minnich]

And a little warning here. This is the PC business, and the version
control on hardware is just terrible.

So, you may have a board called the blackrock m23551-rev 3/Z, and
somebody else may have the blackrock m23551-rev 3/Z, and they may be
utterly different, because you bought yours on a saturday and they
bought theirs on a friday; or at least different enough that their
coreboot image won't work on your board. I'm actually not
exaggerating.

It's quite amazing that this is accepted practice in the PC world, but it is.

You typically need to dig deeper than just the product name. Ah, joy.

thanks

ron

[Peter Stuge]

mrnuke wrote:
> Installing coreboot can be an either enthralling or appalling experience.
> If you're new to coreboot and want to give it a try, following a few simple
> steps can save you a ton of time and frustration.

This would be great on a coreboot.org web page. Maybe even a blog post?

Unfortunately it'll be lost in the mailing list archives already by
tomorrow. :\

//Peter