[coreboot] Extracting EC firmware from EFI firmware

Łukasz Dobrowolski spectrallynx at gmail.com
Wed Aug 3 18:52:25 CEST 2016


Hi!
I'm trying to port Coreboot to ThinkPad X120e.
With help from guys from CCCB we figured that EC (ITE IT8518E) is
constantly talking to BIOS connected on SPI (Winbound 25Q16). Which
prevented in system programming of the flash.

I've build a Coreboot image coping (and tweaking a little bit)
motherboard configuration from a desktop motherboard(asrock/e350m1)
that has the same APU(AMD E350).

The mb looks completely dead when using this image.
Since the EC is always talking to flash chip i suspect that it has
it's program on the same flash chip. I've tried to use binwalk. And
found a lot of "Microsoft portable executable" regions. I don't know
how to put them on the Coreboot rom. Maybe I should just use dd to cut
and join them (doesn't seem like a good idea to me.)?

Am I going in the right direction?
Maybe I should try to use oscilloscope to observe the mb with vendor
BIOS and with my cb rom? Maybe I should try to sniff the communication
on the SPI flash chip?

I've bought a miniPCI-E POST card. It works with vendor BIOS
(interestingly only in one of the slots). It doesn't display anything
when using my Coreboot rom.



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