[coreboot] Gigabyte MB to Test

[Nico Huber]

Hi Jeff,

On 15.03.2018 04:45, Jeff Ausfeld wrote:
> Hi Coreboot Team,
> 
> I have several of the following boards, and it badly needs a Bios overhaul
> as I'm trying to get a Compex card or pretty much any Qualcomm chip to
> properly enumerate.

TLDR; it's probably cheaper to contract Gigabyte to fix their firmware.

> 
> # dmidecode 3.0
> Getting SMBIOS data from sysfs.
> SMBIOS 3.0.0 present.
> 
> Handle 0x0002, DMI type 2, 15 bytes
> Base Board Information
>         Manufacturer: GIGABYTE
>         Product Name: MDH11HI-SI

Just had a look at a related board (MDH11HI rev. 1.0) at Gigabyte's web
page [1]. Seems quite nice. Though, for a full coreboot port, you have
to expect a huge amount of work (probably minimum two weeks for an expe-
rienced coreboot dev, if you are very lucky, for something somehow
usable; full port of all the board's functions takes much longer).

>         Version: 1.x
>         Serial Number: Default string
>         Asset Tag: Default string
>         Features:
>                 Board is a hosting board
>                 Board is replaceable
>         Location In Chassis: Default string
>         Chassis Handle: 0x0003
>         Type: Motherboard
>         Contained Object Handles: 0
> 
> I did upgrade the BIOS from the shipped V5 to V9.  It made little
> difference.
> 
> I can setup whatever access you need, and nothing to worry about breaking.
>  Let's have some fun.

You'd likely have to do the port yourself or pay somebody for it. You
can expect much help if you try to do it by yourself, but it won't be
easy. Especially retrofitting coreboot to a board without documentation
(unless you have a very good contact to Gigabyte you won't get the nee-
ded information) is quite hard and gets harder with every new platform.

The chipset H110 (Sunrise Point-H) and processor Skylake/Kabylake are
supported in coreboot through a blob by Intel (FSP). Most of the work
goes into configuring that blob. Alas, the blob's options (> 700) are
not really documented and we neither know how to get all the infor-
mation out of a running system. So, not the best platform to start
coreboot development with :-/

First step when you want to port coreboot is a reliable flashing and
debugging (console log) setup. The board seems to have a serial (RS232)
header, that's a plus for the log. On the few pictures on that web page,
I couldn't spot a flash chip. Maybe it's on the back? During development
you need a way to flash the firmware with an external programmer (it
won't boot to an OS any more). Possible solutions depend on the flash
chip (I personally prefer wires soldered to its legs, if it has any)...

Nico

[1] http://b2b.gigabyte.com/Embedded-Computing/MDH11HI-rev-10