[coreboot] Via vx855 release status

[Richard Smith]

Today in a meeting with Via OLPC received go ahead to begin to release 
the code for vx855 NorthSouth support in coreboot.  We also are clear to 
push up OpenFirmware support.

OFW will go out when Mitch decides he's happy with what he has.  Could 
be today might be sometime next week.

The code OLPC has for coreboot-v2 needs some work before its going to be 
acceptable for coreboot upstream.

TAKE NOTE!!!

This is NOT an official Via release.  Via has not fully qualified things 
yet and does not want it to be seen as officially supported in any way. 
  This is a release from OLPC and we are responsible for any ommisions, 
bugs, etc.

The documentation is also not yet available publicly and won't be for a 
while.  It is coming though.

Via recognizes that OLPC is capable of managing code on our own and does 
not want to slow us down by having to wait for the official release. 
Kudos to Via.  They have been a pleasure to work with so far.

To err on the safe side I also don't want to just push up the tarball of 
the code I have.  Its a snapshot of a development tree.  Supposed to be 
clean but I've not yet given it a thorough look.  There's lots of stuff 
in there thats #if 0 that looks like it needs to be deleted.

So for now I'd like to only submit it to people who are already under 
NDA with Via.

I've ported it up to the latest V2 but I don't yet have cbfs working on 
it nor does make full use of some of the new enhancements recently added.

Unfortunately, I'm running out of time to work on coreboot.  My duties 
of working on the OLPC EC code will soon consume me.  I'm also about to 
lose the spare board I have with a vx855 on it (its going off to another 
developer).  I'll have to mux in any coreboot testing on the hardware 
with what the 1 board OLPC will have left.  Further limiting my time 
will be that when OFW reaches a point where its a full replacement for 
the COTS bios provided I'll have little reason to use coreboot for anything.

Since only engineering samples of this chipset exist right thats not a 
big deal.  But soon (RSN) there will be hardware available.  An official 
OLPC announcement of what we are up to is in the pipeline.  It will hit 
the wire as soon as the wordsmiths are happy.

So I'm looking for a few developers (just as a precaution) who are under 
NDA with Via and want to start helping with integrating this code into 
upstream.

Once some other eyballs have looked at it and we have cleaned it up a 
bit then we can push up the patch for the general public.

Its possible that this will also work on the vx800 as they are very 
similar. Again, not supported, might kick your dog, etc...

When vx855 hardware becomes available I'll make sure at least one 
coreboot person gets a board.

I also have a question on the fitness level for V3.  Is it worth it to 
port the code to V3 and try to use that as the primary development path?

-- 
Richard A. Smith
smithbone at gmail.com