[coreboot] it boots! [was: re: H8DME-2 woes, continued....]

[Joe Korty]

On Tue, May 11, 2010 at 08:01:28PM -0400, Peter Stuge wrote:
> Joe Korty wrote:
> > I applied the below patch to skip 'codec' initialization (whatever
> > that is) and I was able to boot up to linux.
> 
> Where did you find the suggestion to do it?

I merely looked at the code around the last message to be printed.  There
was another printk a few lines down that wasn't being reached.  As the
'codec' feature sounded worthless (at least at boot time), I decided to
comment it out and see how much further in the boot I proceeded.


> > Can anyone explain what the codec is; perhaps we can turn this
> > 'feature' off permanently?  (or make it a .config option).
> 
> The codec in this case is the chip that converts digital signals into
> audible sound. It's part of the integrated soundcard in the chipset.
> It should certainly not cause a hang..

Thanks!  Now I as least know what it is.  


> The bad part is that we have no docs for MCP55.
> 
> In any case, there is code like this in
> southbridge/nvidia/mcp55/mcp55_aza.c:
> 
>         do {
>                 dword = read32(base + 0x68);
>         } while (dword & 1);
>
> And that's bad. We shouldn't have code like this anywhere in
> coreboot. It should get a timeout of some sort, so that it doesn't
> hang forever.

I'll write up a patch to do that, if no one else beats me to it
first.

Regards,
Joe