I have been looking at trying to port coreboot to my HP zBook 15 G2. Everything is seemingly fine, I can get an image built as this machine is similar to the Lenovo t440p. Unfortunately I have yet to have a successful startup. There are a few differences in the machine which include having a dedicated Nvidia GPU, which i have loaded the video bios file for based on how things were done for SpookySkeletons' 8770w build at https://github.com/SpookySkeletons/Coreboot_8770w
The only thing I can think of would be the Embedded Controller. Unfortunately there isnt a lot of documentation on how the EC could cause these problems nor are there any hints towards how to potentially integrate them into the build. I have found that the EC is an MEC1322 which is a part of the chrome-ec project and was wondering if there may be an easy way to do this integration to further test.
Thanks
Hi Lomár,
I'm currently trying to port coreboot to HP EliteBook 820 G1, which uses the same EC chip MEC1322 and may have the same kind of EC firmware.
On Mon, Apr 06, 2020 at 07:12:24PM -0400, Lomár Berry wrote:
I have been looking at trying to port coreboot to my HP zBook 15 G2. Everything is seemingly fine, I can get an image built as this machine is similar to the Lenovo t440p. Unfortunately I have yet to have a successful startup. There are a few differences in the machine which include having a
What can you see when you try to start up your machine?
The only thing I can think of would be the Embedded Controller. Unfortunately there isnt a lot of documentation on how the EC could cause these problems nor are there any hints towards how to potentially integrate them into the build. I have found that the EC is an MEC1322 which is a part of the chrome-ec project and was wondering if there may be an easy way to do this integration to further test.
EC is really a problem. HP uses a different kind of EC firmware, so we can't use the chrome-ec support code, unless we port chrome-ec to these laptops (I have thought of doing this, but it's another hard problem.). We don't need to extract the EC to put into the coreboot build process if the EC is located in another chip (as is the case in EliteBook 820 G1/G2). What we need to do is to find out how the BIOS code initialize the EC so that the machine can be brought up.
Regards, Iru
The screen remains blank during the process. I do not think coreboot itself is even starting as I try to get logs and all I get it a bunch of ÿ characters.
I will remove the Nvidia GPU from my laptop and see if I can get output then. I have 2 of these laptops.
On Tue, Apr 7, 2020 at 5:14 AM Iru Cai mytbk920423@gmail.com wrote:
Hi Lomár,
I'm currently trying to port coreboot to HP EliteBook 820 G1, which uses the same EC chip MEC1322 and may have the same kind of EC firmware.
On Mon, Apr 06, 2020 at 07:12:24PM -0400, Lomár Berry wrote:
I have been looking at trying to port coreboot to my HP zBook 15 G2. Everything is seemingly fine, I can get an image built as this machine is similar to the Lenovo t440p. Unfortunately I have yet to have a
successful
startup. There are a few differences in the machine which include having
a
What can you see when you try to start up your machine?
The only thing I can think of would be the Embedded Controller. Unfortunately there isnt a lot of documentation on how the EC could cause these problems nor are there any hints towards how to potentially
integrate
them into the build. I have found that the EC is an MEC1322 which is a
part
of the chrome-ec project and was wondering if there may be an easy way to do this integration to further test.
EC is really a problem. HP uses a different kind of EC firmware, so we can't use the chrome-ec support code, unless we port chrome-ec to these laptops (I have thought of doing this, but it's another hard problem.). We don't need to extract the EC to put into the coreboot build process if the EC is located in another chip (as is the case in EliteBook 820 G1/G2). What we need to do is to find out how the BIOS code initialize the EC so that the machine can be brought up.
Regards, Iru
Iru Cai wrote:
What we need to do is to find out how the BIOS code initialize the EC so that the machine can be brought up.
I can think of two ways.
1. Software - use SerialICE for dynamic analysis of the factory BIOS.
2. Hardware - monitor the LPC bus or see if the EC maybe has tracing or its debug UART enabled. The datasheet is good.
I would tend to 2, but 1 requires no dealing with hardware.
Alexander Couzens wrote an LPC sniffer for iCE40 FPGAs: https://github.com/lynxis/lpc_sniffer
Someone modified it to only report specific addresses, that might be useful with the EC too: (But I wish they had just cloned lynxis repo..) https://github.com/denandz/lpc_sniffer_tpm
//Peter
Have you turned off HP Sure Start in the BIOS setting when running the OEM firmware (in "Security->BIOS Integrity Checking")? There's a PEI and bootblock volume in the EC chip, which Sure Start may use to recover the BIOS.
The only thing I can think of would be the Embedded Controller. Unfortunately there isnt a lot of documentation on how the EC could cause these problems nor are there any hints towards how to potentially integrate them into the build. I have found that the EC is an MEC1322 which is a part of the chrome-ec project and was wondering if there may be an easy way to do this integration to further test.
-
Iru Cai -
Lomár Berry -
Peter Stuge