[coreboot] Flashing Coreboot on Lenovo G505s

Anac anac at rbox.co
Sun Sep 23 07:31:54 CEST 2018


Greetings

Following various recommendations on Lenovo G505s, I finally got myself 
a A10-5750M with dedicated GPU. At least I think it has dedicated 
graphics, due to the following output:

# inxi -G

Card-1: AMD Richland [Radeon HD 8650G]
Card-2: AMD Sun Pro [Radeon HD 8570A/8570M]

While waiting for some AliExpress deliveries, I'd like to ask a few 
questions that worry me. I have never flashed anything, but I'm used to 
Linux, the command line and soldering.

A)
According to 
http://dangerousprototypes.com/docs/Flashing_a_BIOS_chip_with_Bus_Pirate
either a Bus Pirate or a CH341A programmer is needed for flashing 
CoreBoot. LibreBoot folks can just take a Raspberry Pi (or better a 
Beagle Bone Black) and a SOIC clip, while CoreBoot needs more equipment. 
Why is that?
Somewhere it reads that the CH341A was faster than BusPirate. But is it 
faster than a Raspi or BeagleBone?
Btw. Flashrom does in fact support RaspberryPi: 
https://www.flashrom.org/RaspberryPi

The reason for asking is because I really don't want to brick anything 
and/or destroy the G505s. And I don't know how to operate a CH341A and 
feel that I'm not really in control of this whole undertaking. Hence, 
I'm trying to keep things as clear and easy as possible.

B)
The instructions on 
http://dangerousprototypes.com/docs/Flashing_a_BIOS_chip_with_Bus_Pirate#Flashing 
suggest the following order of operations:
1) receive a flashrom help
2) erase a flash chip
3) read from a flash chip
4) write to a flash chip
5) verify a flash chip against the file

But should't the original content of the flash chip first got read and 
saved before erasing it? Just in case anything goes wrong and the 
original BIOS would be needed for some reason? So, step 2 and 3 are to 
be swapped, right?

C)
Which Coreboot version should I use? v4.6 or the newest v4.8.1 ? I 
remember @Taiidan mentioning that he used v4.6 and somewhere else it 
reads that there will be some major changes after v4.8. Should I avoid it?

D)
About flashing KB9012: Is it advisable to flash it with Origami-EC ? 
Getting rid of serial numbers sounds nice. But is it save to do? Or is 
there a risk of bricking the KB9012?
http://git.code.paulk.fr/gitweb/?p=origami-ec.git;a=summary
http://dangerousprototypes.com/docs/Flashing_KB9012_with_Bus_Pirate

E)
This machine is going to be a Qubes workstation. Are there any special 
Coreboot options for Qubes OS that one should be aware of?

Thank you! And thanks for all the work that the good folks from 
dangerousprototypes have done and shared!

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