F2A85-V PRO as good target?

[Rudolf Marek]

Hi all,

I think it is time to finally get new FM2 board! I have in mind some version of 
the F2A85-V PRO. Best would be to coordinate bit the efforts and choose some 
board which is long term supported. Also, everything costs quite some money and 
it would be nice if maybe someone already owns it to get some lspci/flash dumps 
etc in advance.

So far I have learned:

1) it has socketed BIOS
2) there seems to be some hw way how to unbrick that, but question is if it will 
accept our images

USB BIOS Flashback - Easy, worry-free USB BIOS

I suspect it is done by some 8051 controller, possibly some of those chips:
http://detail.zol.com.cn/picture_index_975/index9747187_0_p336189.shtml

Looks like independent of any other chips, it could be cool feature for coreboot 
users.

3) it has serial port
4) it has NCT6779D which has no public datasheet
5) I was able to decompress the EFI firmware (skip first 2KB) with the 
bios_extract with some enhancements for compressed volumes. I think I got this 
from Patrick? I found there at least one 8051 firmware which looks like it is 
providing the EPU function. I suspect this runs inside southbridge, because the 
usual AMD signature is wiped with "xxxxxxxx" at 0x2000 ;) I think this can be a 
PITA but I dont know if it will work without this. Or if we would have to 
provide a way how to include that in the resulting image. I did not find a 
decompressed version of this fw. I suspect it lives iniside the flash after 
first flashing or so...

5) some of firmware files are quite funny and include cryptographic keys for 
microsoft and canonical also, it seems the "secure part" of the image updater is 
packed with UPX and this is then used by flashers (maybe extra other SMI layer 
is involved I dont know) (look for ASEX_update_bios_firmware does the trick)

All in all, I'm nearly convinced I will try to do it, but of course it is hard 
not to imagine some showstoper and all the money invested to new coreboot hw as 
wasted.

Thanks
Rudolf