[coreboot] Asus M2V-MX problems

[David Hillman]

I have finally gotten another programmed BIOS chip.  It turns out the 
old chip was damaged somehow.  Here is the error that I got from Flashrom:

...Erasing flash chip...ERASE FAILED at 0x00000000! Expected =0xff, 
Read=0x4c, failed byte count from 0x00000000-0x00000fff: 0xfb3...

I also got that error while trying to program the latest factory BIOS 
file using flashrom; flashrom was able to erase and program the new chip 
with no problems.  My original problem of creating a proper image for 
this board still remains.  Superiotool found ITE IT8716F (id=0x8716, 
rev=0x1) at 0x2e.  Any help would be appreciated.

On 1/31/2012 4:36 PM, Rudolf Marek wrote:
> Hi,
>
>> I was hoping to use the board above to experiment with Coreboot.  The 
>> board has
>> the same northbridge as the Asus M2V-MX SE (VIA K8M890) and the same 
>> southbridge
>> as the Asus M2V (VIA 8237A).  Both of those chipsets are fully 
>> supported.
>> Thinking that maybe I can at least get the board to boot ASAP, I 
>> built Coreboot
>> for the Asus M2V board to get the southbridge functionality.  I also 
>> didn't use
>> the M2V-MX SE profile because it has the SPI chip, while the M2V-MX 
>> board has a
>> PLCC-32 chip.
>
> OK
>
>
>> The board booted fine, except I have no video, serial port or ability 
>> to write
>> to the BIOS chip.
>
> No video -> you need to include the extracted VGA bios from original 
> BIOS. No serial port looks like wrong superio setup. No ability to 
> write to the chip sounds interesting ? What do you mean by that. 
> Flashrom cannot no-long overwrite the chip content? Maybe just some 
> GPIO needs to be raised. Do you have more PLCC chips or other boards 
> so you can hotswap them?
>
>> I know the board booted fine because I was able to SSH into
>> the box using a PCI network card.  Considering that both the M2V and 
>> M2V-MX have
>> the same southbridge chip, I don't understand why there was not 
>> serial port or
>> write access to the BIOS chip.  Can someone shed some light on that 
>> for me, please.
>
> Yep see above. I would suggest to run the superiotool (see utils dir) 
> and check what kind of superio is really there. Or even better provide 
> ./superiotool -d dump best with original bios running if possible.
>
> Then you just need to change few lines and you should get serial back. 
> I can even help with that but we need to know not only the chip there 
> but also how the chip is configured.
>
> For the VGA you need to use bios_extract and extract the VGA bios from 
> orig bios image and tell coreboot via menu to include that (you need 
> just pci ID lspci -n will tell)
>
>> My other problem is I would like to create a build profile for the 
>> M2V-MX using
>> the code from the M2V for the southbridge and the code from the 
>> M2V-MX SE for
>> the northbridge.  Is that a good idea or would I have to do some 
>> other things?
>> I learned C programming in 1993 and used it only until 1998; I am a 
>> little
>> rusty.
>
> Well C is simple you will got it back soon.
>
>> My ability to make sense of low-level chipset stuff is also very
>> narrow.
>
> If you ask good questions you will get answers.
>
>>  However, I am a fast learner and I am desperate to get something
>> accomplished for a homebrew thin client project that I have spent way 
>> too much
>> time working on.
>>
>> My goal is to extend the life of boards that people send in for 
>> recycling by
>> turning them into more reliable diskless information terminals.
>
> A nice coreboot use!
>
> Thanks
> Rudolf