[coreboot] How long will take to add coreboot support for my motherboard? Please, expert roughly estimation needed.

Stefan Reinauer stefan.reinauer at coreboot.org
Wed May 18 22:38:27 CEST 2011


* Vikram Narayanan <vikram186 at gmail.com> [110517 16:50]:
> On Tue, May 17, 2011 at 4:06 PM, Anders Jenbo <anders at jenbo.dk> wrote:
> > Den 17-05-2011 10:41, Андрей Клаус skrev:
> >
> > Hello everybody,
> >
> > I'm thinking about porting coreboot to my motherboard (epox 9NPA3I / 9NPA3J
> > / 9NPAJ-3 / 9NPA3 Ultra Series). My chipset (CK804) and my superio
> > (F71872F/FG) are in supported list. According to this page
> > (http://www.coreboot.org/Support) port "might be easy" (exactly: "If you
> > find those in our list of Supported Chipsets and Devices a port might be
> > easy").
> >
> > I need roughly estimation for "easy" to decide is it possible for me to port
> > coreboot or not (in time-consuming terms). So, is "easy" up to 8 hours for
> > coreboot expert, or is it up to 40 hours for coreboot expert? Will be great
> > if you could give me estimation for 'worst' and 'best' variant.
> >
> > Thank you very much,
> > Andrey
> >
> > It took me less then 8 hours to make my first port, and I'm not even a C
> > programmer, mine was a best case senario as there was a sibling board
> > already ported. I have also ported some where just the component where
> > supported, that didn't take to long either, probably 7-10 hours.
> >
> > Working on a board where only legacy code and docs are available I have
> > probably spend around 12 hours to get to ram init.
> >
> > I think the key to sussess is to have an easy way to reflash the bios when
> > your image failes.
> Seems quite inspirational to the people who wanted to port for new boards.
> @ Stefan: Can you please share your opinions on this?

Those values vary widely on the quality of the port, the number of
features and the amount of testing you put into this. Getting an OS
booted on a new mainboard can be a thing of 15 minutes, if you are
lucky and just copy an existing mainboard and maybe change the SuperI/O. 

However, doing a port to a new board is usually a lot more than that.

There are many board ports in coreboots tree these days, and frankly,
not all of them are production level quality and/or tested on a large
number of different configurations. Something you whip up in a dat most
certainly is not. It might still be a great port and do everything the
author wanted it to do.

Stefan





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