[coreboot] [COREBOOT] : Can I hope to have Coreboot on a mininote 2133 ?

[Peter Stuge]

Cirdec AREVIR wrote:
> I get a HP Mininote with VIA C7 processor to try to free the bios
> with Coreboot. So I need some help to understand if it could be
> possible :

Yes, it could. At the very least you will need the chipset
documentation however.


> From this pictures frolm a 2133 dissection, where is the bios chip ?

http://www.hp2133guide.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/05/mobounderside3.jpg

The flash chip is U515 (written upside down on the PCB) - the 8-pin
chip with a red ink dot on the corner. It's a little to the left of
the ITE IT8512.

I can't read the model from the photo, but my guess is that it's an
SST25VF080B.

Your version of flashrom is very old, get the latest and I think it
will work on the system.


> Is it easy to put a socket to easily change it ?

This chip package is called SO-8 or SOIC-8. The distance between the
two rows of pins is 200 mil. I haven't seen any sockets that would be
suitable for replacing a SO-8 and still have socket+chip be small
enough to not be a problem with regard to the computer's case.

For development it would be best to have an emulator instead,
coresystems are using the Dediprog SF-100 successfully, but it costs
further money. Another option is to work on the Artec dongle VHDL
code to also implement an SPI chip-compatible state machine, and
logic to fetch and prefetch data from the dongle flash chip at just
the right SPI clock cycles in order to meet the SPI bus timing
requirements.


//Peter