[coreboot] Removal of AGESA - to be or NOT to be? A story of G505S

[Timothy Pearson]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

On 11/06/2015 03:13 PM, Vladimir wrote:
> Yes, I really want to participate in the Lenovo G505S porting from AGESA
> to Native Init ! But, to be honest, I have never done such a task
> before, so my experience is probably not enough for doing this port
> alone by myself : I cannot even estimate the amount of necessary work
> and don't know where to start... (Dear Timothy, could you please point
> me to any good examples of AGESA --> Native Init porting?) However, I
> will be very glad to help as much as I could by being a build tester: I
> can constantly test these "native init" builds on my hardware - as many
> build iterations as it needed in order to help make "Native Init" a
> stable and good enough candidate for replacing AGESA
> 
> Also I will seriously consider donating some Money/Things to those
> coreboot developers who will make significant commits for bringing G505S
> "Native Init" port to life, although my financial abilities became very
> limited after Rubble currency collapse so unfortunately I cannot
> guarantee this type of support as well as how much would be the amount
> of donations...
> 
> Lenovo G505S uses quad core A10-5750M APU which is Richland
> architecture. This architecture does not include PSP hardware ( ARM
> TrustZone security co-processor) , so luckily this Family 15h RL laptop
> does not need a PSP blob ;-)
> 
> By the way there are just two AMD-based laptops that are supported by
> coreboot, and another one is HP M6-1035DX which has weaker hardware /
> smaller availability / lack of manufacturer support (HP quickly forgets
> their old laptop models and probably already stopped replacement
> motherboards production for this laptop - but I'd be happy to be wrong
> here) . As for now, G505S seems to be the only AMD laptop which is
> supported by coreboot and is really alive , so hopefully its code will
> be allowed to stay in its AGESA shape until a stable "Native Init"
> replacement will be introduced
> 
> Best regards,
> Vladimir Shipovalov

Unfortunately I don't think there are any guides for porting from AGESA
to native initialisation.  In theory it might be best to copy a known
working native laptop (e.g. a Family 10h/K8 machine), then bring over
all the code from the AGESA board that is machine specific.

The biggest concern here is that this is an APU-based machine, and as
such I have no idea if there is non-AGESA "chipset" support, or how
difficult it would be to create said support.  If there are any other
developers on list that might be interested in helping out please chime
in here!

I would also imagine at minimum the person doing the power would need
direct access to a G505S machine.

- -- 
Timothy Pearson
Raptor Engineering
+1 (415) 727-8645 (direct line)
+1 (512) 690-0200 (switchboard)
http://www.raptorengineeringinc.com
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.11 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org/

iQEcBAEBAgAGBQJWPTgMAAoJEK+E3vEXDOFbKjYH/0egn3/01cI4Q3+IxNoah4pb
UU64uYVPlwezP4rcEFFFEv9ueJavgKwtEO7CUF0zdWsAyPVqaopcEPFYr2Lg8FNr
6CEXZveIikwSpjeoa8ZSIuRVlm0m3V7oSJKfhnrqdOlr/ldGVB0gBgxyc72i4kLL
9UQkuFegvW42KFHKikjXFG46HjIHBUieZvt0dn5Ym1CuXyCdIlK202PcUOoiHdjb
JJzGxtsq/ZfxZi6RaGIpVhYNQt4ReUGQq4aKO8hXwR7GTYheqLADfdDf3wqHMC2N
w/NLDZ6Xy7N6LmI7Z+r0OrXI4aJpuog+TICTm5fOz2BCzRWrrTNxUbPbqyiEkS8=
=sHPe
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----