weekly report #1

As the first week has already gone so soon, i spend the whole week to clear my thought, checking the xcompile configuration of libpayload. I also read some code of buildroot which wish could bring some ideas for me.

I know it may be a little wasting. But i began to write code in the weekend. Hope everything goes fine this week.

Jetway PA78VM5-H porting progress

firstly, thanks to Scott Olsen for supporting the mainboard. PA78VM5 is 780/700/ddr2.

The superio which it used is fintek f71863fg. I have already make all of the code done. but at last i found that i do not have the serial port convert which make me can connect to it.

The following week may be used to 1)extract the vbios. 2)make the linux booting…

i am pretty looking forward that.

One week plus…

I would like to report that I’m making some progress, but that wouldn’t quite be accurate.  I am making progress: I’m putting in adequate hours, reading code, reading specifications, but… let’s just say I’m starting to appreciate some of the less than complimentary things I’ve read about [U]EFI.  It is extremely complicated.  My inner engineer is constantly frowning as I read page after page of documentation, thinking, really?  they couldn’t think of a simpler way to design this?  Not trying to complain.  There are a few things I really like about EFI, but this sort of software development –the kind that starts with 3000+ pages of specifcations– is unlike anything I’ve ever dealt with.

flashrom progress report #1

Getting the flashrom 0.9.2 release out of the door was a really labor-intensive process because we wanted to make 0.9.2 the 1000th commit in the repository. That worked and 0.9.2 is a really nice release with no known regressions, but a lot more features and improved reliability. Speaking from experience of the last 3 releases, acting as release manager is really a full-time job and will not leave any spare time for developing cool features.

flashrom GSoC development is right on track. So far, I have posted patches for:
Continue reading flashrom progress report #1

flashrom 0.9.2 released

The flashrom developers are happy to announce the release of flashrom 0.9.2.

flashrom is a utility for reading, writing, erasing and verifying flash ROM chips.

flashrom is designed to update BIOS/EFI/coreboot/firmware/optionROM images on mainboards, network/graphics/storage controller cards, and various programmer devices. It can do so without any special boot procedures and from your normal working environment.

After over nine years of development and constant improvement, we have added support for every BIOS flash ROM technology present on x86 mainboards and every flash ROM chip we ever saw in the wild.

Highlights of flashrom:
Continue reading flashrom 0.9.2 released

Coreboot console over Ethernet

Although this article is about Coreboot I start from beginning. Once upon a time (November 2009) there was nice idea to make SerialICE work through the Ethernet link. Reason is simple, it is slow and Ethernet is way faster. I started to investigate if there is some network adapter which can be used without the need of RAM.

If you check the documentation of most Ethernet chips, the packet descriptors are always located in main memory and they  just use DMA to transfer data to/from the FIFO inside the card. I tried some sophisticated google queries to find out if there is some adapter with internal SRAM, and after a while I found one. Continue reading Coreboot console over Ethernet

Payload infrastructure

hi i am Cai Bai Yin. And my GSOC 2010 project is Payload infrastrcuture. The main job may including adding payload build support to the coreboot kconfig and crossgcc build which would make the project as an whole. if time permit, some filo improment will aslo be included.

I am a freshman to coreboot. But i am trying my best to do things better. There may be lots of tough probems stay in front of me. Hope i can deal everything well. I will aslo try to learn as much as i can from the others.

Getting TianoCore to work well as a coreboot payload

Hi!  My name’s Robert Austin, and my GSoC 2010 project is to get TianoCore working well as a coreboot payload.   TianoCore is the open source component of Intel’s implementation of UEFI.  TianoCore on it’s own is not a BIOS replacement, but it can do some interesting things, and since a quite a few large companies are already committed to EFI, it makes sense to have an EFI payload as an option in coreboot.

I am very excited about working on this project, and working with the coreboot community.  I will make regular announcements about my progress here on this blog, and I will keep my working code available in a git repository here.  There isn’t anything there yet, but there will be soon.  To anyone who happens to checkout my code during the summer, I welcome any comments or suggestions relating to the style or quality of my code.  I want to write high-quality code, so feedback is appreciated.