[coreboot] Which machine is good for developing on coreboot?

[Jiang Wang]

Hi all,

I am a PhD student at a university and working on a research project
which needs to modify the BIOS. Since most BIOS are close sourced, I
choose the coreboot as the developing environment and thanks for
providing such a good open source “BIOS”.
Most of the existing computers in my lab are kind of new and Intel CPU
based DELL desktop or servers. I guess they are not supported by
coreboot. Therefore, I want to buy a new machine (my advisor will pay
for that :) ) which is already well-supported by coreboot for
developing, and I need your suggestions of which machine(x86 based
desktop or workstation) is a good candidate. (Another reason I don’t
like Intel based machine is that their documentation is poor compared
to AMD. )

I have following requirements for the new machine.
1)	Fully supported by coreboot. Especially, I want following support
2)	Support Windows (XP) and Linux
3)	Support ACPI S3 sleep (suspend to RAM)
4)	Good documentation about how to detect and configure the memory
(because I will modify this part for our project).

I read coreboot Wiki and found out most supported parts are separated,
such as CPU, motherboard, NB, SB, etc. Does that mean I need to buy
all the parts and assemble the machine by myself? It is OK, but if
there is some vendor providing a whole computer would be better. Or I
guess I just need a good motherboard, any suggestions?

Also, I prefer to buy an AMD K8 or K10 machine. Could someone
recommend which main board should I use? I see “Pistachio” and
“Tilapia” in the supported motherboard wiki, but I don’t know where I
can buy those boards? Thanks.

PS: I am new to BIOS development but have some experience in Linux and
Window device driver.

Regards,

Jiang