[coreboot] $7 cheap FT232H board as EHCI debug dongle for coreboot - would it work?

[Vadim Bendebury]

Did you consider one of these:

https://www.digikey.com/products/en/cable-assemblies/smart-cables/468?k=ftdi+uart&k=&pkeyword=ftdi+uart&pv493=316&FV=ffe001d4&quantity=0&ColumnSort=0&page=1&pageSize=25

there are many options, it is important to match the cable's VDD to your
board's (1.8V vs 3.3V), the rest of the parameters is way less important.

-vb


On Sat, Mar 3, 2018 at 5:27 AM, Mike Banon <mikebdp2 at gmail.com> wrote:

> Good day! I am looking for the dirt cheap EHCI debug dongle. Initially
> I found these instructions for FX2LP -
> https://www.coreboot.org/DIY_EHCI_debug_dongle - but they require a
> lot of manual soldering/mods which depend on your boards revision and
> I am not sure if the currently produced boards are 100% compatible
> with the wiki instructions
>
> But then I noticed a coreboot has USBDEBUG_DONGLE_FTDI_FT232H option:
> " Use this with FT232H usb-to-uart. Configuration is hard-coded to use
> 8n1, no flow control "
>
> Kyösti Mälkki tested it " with gizmosphere/gizmo1 Explorer add-on
> board, which exposes the following device:
>    0x0403 Future Technology Devices International, Ltd
>    0x6014 FT232H Single HS USB-UART/FIFO IC "
> but gizmo1 is expensive and I am not a fan of the single board
> computers (SBCs) : they all require the binary blobs which could
> contain the scary backdoors
>
> However, there are $7 cheap FT232H boards with USB available at AliExpress:
>
> https://www.aliexpress.com/item/NEW-CJMCU-FT232H-
> Multifunction-High-Speed-USB-to-JTAG-UART-FIFO-SPI-I2C-
> Module/32818305310.html
>
> I plan to get a couple of these boards, connect them to each other
> with 1P 2.54mm wires, plug the 1st board into master PC
> (coreboot-PC-under-debug) USB 2.0 port and the 2nd board into slave PC
> (another coreboot PC which will be logging the debug info)
>
> Please tell me: could this setup work in theory, or there are obvious
> shortcomings that could prevent it from working?
>
> Best regards,
> Mike Banon
>
> --
> coreboot mailing list: coreboot at coreboot.org
> https://mail.coreboot.org/mailman/listinfo/coreboot
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