[coreboot] CarPC project, with MB899 MB

Peter Stuge peter at stuge.se
Wed Oct 13 22:58:19 CEST 2010


Nasa wrote:
> All that said, I was hoping to get pointed in the right direction
> to being able to install this in my motherboard. The specifics of
> the board (in case I misread the post) are(from manual):
> 
> IBASE MB899
> Intel 945GM Chipset
> GMCH: 82945GM 1466-pin Micro-FCBGA
> ICH7M:82801GBM 652-pin MBGA.

Did you pick a particular CPU for the board, or did the CPU come
already installed when you bought the board?

In general you're in luck because as was noted the board is supported
by coreboot.

You will need a few things:

* Cross-over serial cable (AKA null modem)
* Spare boot flash chips
* Patience

You have to choose a payload for your coreboot build. coreboot does
hardware init but does not include any code to boot your operating
system. That second part is handled by a completely separate program,
which is stored together with coreboot in the boot flash.

An easy first step might be to use SeaBIOS as payload. SeaBIOS is an
open source legacy BIOS implementation, so your system should start
just like before. Once everything is running well with
coreboot+SeaBIOS you could move on and try to optimize the boot even
further, using other payloads.


> While I am very capable of building software out of SVN (been doing
> that for mythtv, openmobile, etc) and linux kernel,

Good. Note that coreboot and SeaBIOS both run before an operating
system environment is available, and the toolchains shipped with many
distributions have been patched so that they fail to correctly build
such software. You can try using your regular toolchain, but if you
have any trouble then it is recommended to build a reference
toolchain and use that to build coreboot. After svn checkout of the
coreboot tree, do:

cd util/crossgcc
./buildgcc
cd ../..
rm -f .xcompile

The next time you run make in the coreboot directory it should pick
up the toolchain built by buildgcc automatically. Check the contents
of .xcompile to make sure.


> I have not played with pulling individual chips, like a BIOS.  So I
> don't know anything about acquiring and/or replacing one.

Note that BIOS is the software, not so much the flash chip it is
stored in.

You will need replacement flash chips. They shouldn't cost more than
a few USD and I recommend getting a few of them, so that you always
have at least one backup of the factory BIOS that you can use if
coreboot doesn't work straight away. (Sometimes it will, but better
safe than sorry, if there's a problem you can't start the system
anymore without a backup flash chip.)


Warren Turkal wrote:
> the bios chip might be the SST thing near the white connector in
> the bottom left quadrant of the board.

Yes, that's correct. This package is called PLCC32, but only
describes the physical format of the chip.


> I think it's an LPC style chip.

Well, almost. It is connected to a bus which is electrically and
protocol-wise compatible with LPC, but all Intel chipsets use their
own memory read and write commands which are different from the LPC
standard commands. The flash chip type is usually called FWH,
Firmware Hub, since that is the name of Intel's own boot flash chips.

Look for a couple of compatible flash chips. Some current part
numbers are:

8Mbit = 1Mbyte
SST49LF008A-33-4C-NHE
http://parts.digikey.com/1/parts/1904170-ic-flash-fwh-8mbit-33mhz-32plcc-sst49lf008a-33-4c-nhe.html

16Mbit = 2Mbyte
SST49LF016C-33-4C-NHE
SST49LF016C-66-4C-NHE
http://parts.digikey.com/1/parts/1904173-ic-flash-ser-lpc-16mbit-32plcc-sst49lf016c-33-4c-nhe.html


You can most likely use flashrom (flashrom.org, coreboot sibling
project) to read the factory BIOS from the chip in a running system.
You can then hotswap flash chips (prepare them with pushpin knobs
first) in the running system, put a blank chip in, and write your
first factory BIOS backup onto that. Then get the third flash chip,
repeat the hotswap, and write a coreboot image with SeaBIOS onto
that chip. Reboot and watch the seral port output on another
computer, via the null modem cable.


//Peter




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