[coreboot] Kontron, 986LCD-M

[am kara]

Please direct me to make sure I can change the BIOS of the following computer with Corebot before buying it:
Kontron, 986LCD-M/miniITX

1) Does the vendor BIOS have a boot block? If I over-write BIOS chip completely, the boot block will be gone? I know that this board has Megatrends, AMIBIOS with kontron extensions, which probably has some facilities(boot block) to save or write the BIOS chip, can i replace the vendor BIOS with Coreboot by this facility? and if I write on flash BIOS, i will lose the vendor BIOS and the boot block completely?
Please let me know if anybody has some experience using `flashrom` free utility which is used for writing on BIOS chips. 

2) Can i install Linux, Fedora 12 on this motherboard? Does Linux kernel(www.kernel.org), the latest version, recognize all the motherboard chipset, CPU and other components?