On Wed, 2012-06-20 at 18:11 +0200, Paul Kocialkowski wrote:
I think next step is to try writing another firmware to the chip via SPI, to see how it goes.
I extracted one from the latest windows binary MSI provides to update the BIOS and will do the flashing later today.
While reading the board user manual, I saw that MSI provides the pinout for the JCOM1 on-board connector: I assumed that's a serial port, which could help when attempting to port coreboot to the board.
Here is the pinout of both the JCOM1 connector and the DB9 connector I used: http://download.paulk.fr/coreboot/msi-z68ma-g45/jcom1-db9-pinout.png
After soldering it all [1], I put the connector on the board [2] and it worked! I tested with a RS232 to USB adapter on one side and getty listening on ttyS0 on the MSI Z68MA-G45 side: I was able to use the shell from the USB adapter side!
I'm not particularly asking for help there, I just thought it would be a good idea to publish all this, in case one wants to start a port to a similar MSI board.
Though, there is something that could be serial-related: I can't find any reference to the SuperIO! coreboot's superiotool didn't detect any. Is it possible that the Z68 chipset is handling serial too?
[1] http://download.paulk.fr/coreboot/msi-z68ma-g45/jcom1-soldered-connector.jpg [2] http://download.paulk.fr/coreboot/msi-z68ma-g45/jcom1-on-board-connector.jpg
-- Paul Kocialkowski