Hi JM, Welcome to coreboot. Sorry for the late response, i'm not subscribed.
- Does the board work after RAMBASE rework (i.e. is ticket #163 really
fixed)?
The RAMBASE problems are solved.
- Is the current support of this board sufficient to boot Linux? More
specifically, I have come across some reports of broken vsa and acpi, is this still an issue? If so, how does the lack of those features affect normal Linux operation?
You need a working GX2 vsa. As far as i know there is no ready and free available version around. I have a version that works mostly, but i am working on a new version. As i have very little time to spend on it it is evolving slowly. There is no early (bios) vga available yet.
ACPI is not implemented.
- When booting Linux from USB using default manufacturer's BIOS the
ATA port is being disabled. Is this a software or hardware limitation? In other words, if I boot from USB with coreboot/SeaBIOS would I have ATA enabled?
This is a software limitation of the original bios. I boot from a IDE drive in coreboot.
- When I boot the Linux kernel with the default BIOS it occasionally
hangs on initializing the PCI subsystem. Is this a result of a bug in vsa code (virtualized pci) or BIOS? Does the problem persist with coreboot/SeaBIOS and AMD's vsa? I noticed something called OpenVSA, does it support Geode GX?
I don't see that on coreboot. OpenVSA is never finished and not working.
The current state is: I use rev.6433 with some patches for development/testing and stopped updating because of tracing the many regressions took all my time. I don't know if current trunk boots on S50. Probably not as there are a lot of changes such as small bootblock. It boots linux and when you use the in kernel geode GX2 vga driver you can use VGA. Power button doesn't work. No ACPI. (no real problem when you don't use suspend) Beeper doesn't work. Flashrom works.
If you want an experimental coreboot rom image send me a mail.
Greetings, Nils.
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Nils