Re: [coreboot] Sun Ultra 40 M2 Board - Obscured coreboot status

[Bostjan Kravcar]

Hello everyone,

I'm "bumping" my own thread already, as I realized that .txt may just as
well be the only supported (or allowed) format for attachments. Apologies to
all, it was a clumsy beginner's error in judgement. I promise to do
something about those excessive spacings between the paragraphs as well, by
using a Plain Text format from now on.

I copy/pasted the summary of my findings into .txt file ("Sun Ultra 40 M2 &
coreboot - Brief Summary"), but I'm not sure if the attachment will get
through (a brief HOW-TO would be nice ... I couldn't find anything on the
subject). The latest status table for Ultra 40 M2 board, that I was able to
find, is at the link below (to serve as a reference to my initial post
content):

https://www.coreboot.org/Board:sunw/ultra40m2

Kind regards,

Bostjan

Sun Ultra 40 M2 Board - Obscured coreboot status

Not to rain on your parade but currently I see this system going for
$400 on ebay or $130 for the board and am curious...what is compelling
for you and this? I did not know when I first started coreboot but you
can buy faster and newer open source firmware boards for less money -
stuff that you can do real work on.

I would definitely get a KCMA-D8 or KGPE-D16[1] if you want something
newer with open source firmware that works straight away but that's me.
If you are a programmer and want to tinker/port coreboot there are other
similar boards of the same class and era that would be a better fit too
such as the TYAN systems.

[1]The D8/D16 are fast enough to compile modern software and can play
modern games in a VM (via IOMMU-GFX) so you can use it for more than
just tinkering - they also support the facebook version of OpenBMC
(AFAIK there are two OpenBMC's versions the facebook and the IBM the
second has more features and comes on the TALOS system but both are
secure owner controlled remote access) via replacing the crappy vendor
firmware on the ASMB4/5 module (D16 comes with module D8 doesn't)
Both have working coreboot with no fiddling just compile and go same
features as the factory BIOS...and the D8 can be had used for less than
your U40.

I would also check out the TALOS 2; POWER is the future of high
performance freedom computing as there will probably never be another
owner controlled x86 system due to ME/PSP etc. It has open source
firmware out of the box (not coreboot) but again you should start with a
D8 or D16 and a decent compatible CPU.

Sun Ultra 40 M2 Board - Obscured coreboot status

[ron minnich]

On Sat, Jul 21, 2018 at 4:56 AM [e-mail]  wrote:
> there will probably never be another
> owner controlled x86 system due to ME/PSP etc.

I think that is correct.

What is your goal here? I like old hardware too, but at some point, it's a
lot more trouble than it's worth to keep these things going.