[coreboot] How coreboot cooperate with other "bioses"

[Michal Widlok]

Hello Peter,
Thanks for reply.

> Short answer: It won't.
>
> It can be made to call the ROMs for initialization, but I don't think
> it does so by default on any board.
>
> I guess RAID would be the minimum to have a usable system. I would
> start there. I know that RAID ROMs have been done.
>
> FWIW I also have a 2850, just that mine is in production. I could
> do occasional testing on it.
>

I'm lucky to have my own PE2850 with gentoo linux, however it is used
as a "home server" and I obviously don't want to make it unusable by a
mistake :-). Fortunately I can play with it a little bit.

>
> Can you read the part numbers off the chips?
>

Yes, but because of mechanical modifications that I have done (new
cooling system) opening it is not so simple as it was. Anyway I can
even do some soldering but I have to know that it is worth it. Now I
don't want to disassembly my cooling before I learn some more about
coreboot.

>
> Are they really similar?
>

If I read correctly data-sheets, PE1850 is just smaller version of
PE2850. The share the same CPUs, chipset, BMC and IPMI. Thy have
different expansion slots (3 on 2850, 2 on 1850), different backplanes
(more disks on 2850) and PE1850 has PERC 4e/Si RAID controller, while
PE2850 has a 2 channel version PERC 4e/Di. Even on-board graphics card
it identical. I would guess (after looking at images) that they share
almost the same main-board, the layout is identical. Flash chips are
located in the back near power supply module.


> I think the flash chip was desoldered and programmed externally. I'm
> not sure.
>

I can try that but what with backplanes BMC and IPMI? Is that mean
that they will not be usable with coreboot at all? My current
configurations makes heavy use of IPMI for status logs and diagnose, I
really don't want to loose it.

Many thanks
Michael W.