[coreboot] via pc3500g

[Corey Osgood]

On Tue, Aug 31, 2010 at 10:25 PM, illdred <illdred at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Wed, 1 Sep 2010 02:51:10 +0200
> Peter Stuge <peter at stuge.se> wrote:
>
>> illdred wrote:
>> > I would like to use coreboot on my machine.
>> ..
>> > VIA C7 cpu, VIA CN896 northbirdge, VIA 8237A southbridge
>> ..
>> > Will it work?
>>
>> No, not without development work.
>>
>>
>> > looks to me like the only unsupported piece is the northbridge.
>>
>> That's not so "only" - adding support for a northbridge is a
>> significant effort.
>>
>> That said, 896 is similar to other 8xx chipsets which are already
>> supported. Would you be interested in working on the project of
>> supporting also 896?
>>
>>
>> //Peter
>>
>
> Yes, I would be interested. let me know what I can do to assist.
>
> I'll join up on the #coreboot irc
>
> thanks for writing back to me
>

Since there's no public datasheet for the CN896, about the only
possibility is to look at the VX800 port, compare what it does to
lspci -xxx from your CN896 system, and see how well they match up. If
they're similar enough, you may be able to rip the northbridge/memory
init code out of the vx800 and use it to boot up the cn896...but it's
a long shot. You may also be able to use SerialICE to see what the
factory BIOS does and copy it, but what's the point of using coreboot
if you're just using it to do the same thing the factory bios does?

-Corey