hello
since no one on irc even replied with "go away intel nazi!!11", i have to propose my idea here ;)
i tried to get flashrom to work on my two main computers[1], but they don't work because of the EC/Intel's management engine (ME). i don't know for sure how the vendor tools do the flashing, but i presume that they talk to the ME via HECI to coordinate the process. There _was_ an attempt to get basic HECI and QST (intel quiet system technology) into the kernel to allow temperature readings etc. Intel abandoned it in 2009 [2]. my (project) idea is to try to reverse engineer some vendor tools to see how they work and try to reproduce it in flashrom to eventually support ME enabled motherboards in flashrom. i dunno how big the impact would be, but i guess this would allow even many laptops to be supported? what do you think about this idea and its feasibility? any volunteers for mentoring? :)
1: http://patchwork.coreboot.org/patch/2798/ 2: http://driverdev.linuxdriverproject.org/pipermail/devel/2009-September/00245...
also i have some questions about the "official" ideas: UI: - With TUI do you mean (something like) ncurses? - the "current" code is [3]? i have not looked into it yet. - has it to use qt and/or that code (i like java *hide* and have a bit of gdk experience)?
recovery stuff: guess it would be mandatory to have a working coreboot setup with real hardware for that?
bitbanging support: this would also require available hardware. would i have to buy that myself? can it be borrowed from someone? these projects would probably profit from my open workbench logic analyzer...
the infrastructure things sound a bit boring, but from what i saw in the source some refactoring would (also) improve the codebase somewhat. ;) so the infrastructure-related projects may be even the most valuable contribution for longterm goals. ok that was not really a question, sorry.
if there are other ideas i would love to hear them (soon).
thanks!
3: http://gitorious.org/flashrom/flashrom-gui/commits/master