[coreboot] Coreboot on the Thinkpad T61p ?

[Patrick Arnoux]

On 07/16/11 01:55 PM, Peter Stuge wrote:
> Patrick Arnoux wrote:
>>> we don't have any documentation for the i965 (crestline) Memory
>>> Controller
>> Not sure if this is the relevant document,
> ..
>> Mobile Intel® 965 Express
>> Chipset Family
>> Datasheet
> It isn't. This is only a shallow overview of the chipset. The
> neccessary documentation requires two levels of NDAs with Intel
> which in turn requires a solid business case. Further, having access
> to the right application engineers within Intel during development
> can easily make the difference of several man-months of forward and
> reverse engineering, trial and error and guesswork. (Ie. the NDAed
> docs are also not exhaustive.
>
>
> //Peter
>
This "shallow overview" weighs in at over 500 pages. I guess it means we 
are not in Kansas anymore.
These NDAed docs must rival "War and Peace".

As I am still very much interested in the T61, and if you all don't 
mind, I would like to ask a couple of
questions :
     A) My first thought was to start from the T60, modify whatever 
needed to be and thank you ma'am
         Simplistic, yes, but are the T60 and T61 so fundamentally 
different that this is never going to fly.
     B) Besides the i965 Controller, what other chips do we need 
documentation for on the T61 ?
     C) If I can get to the point where control is handed over to the on 
disk Boot Block (mind you, this
         can be USB, DVD, CD, PCMCIA, or Hard disk), do I care anymore 
about the BIOS. Does an
         Operating System ;Solaris, Linux, Unix or whatever just goes on 
about its business and really
         couldn't give two hoots about whether and what kind of BIOS 
exists on the machine.
     D) If there are indeed system calls made to the BIOS, what are they 
and what are the affected chips.
     E) What is the minimum level of hardware initialization that needs 
to be done in order to be able to
         load an OS.
     F) Bottom line, I am not interested in an all singing, all dancing 
BIOS, I just want to load the OS and
         to paraphrase a quote from Linus T. I just ran into, he just 
wants the BIOS to load the OS and get
         the double F out of the way!

I would really appreciate it if people with knowledge of any of the 
above points would take the time to
comment about what they know and I will take it upon myself to summarize.

And if you feel like telling me to go Read The FAQ or the Fine Manual, 
please, point me in the right direction.
It would also be appreciated.

Patrick