[coreboot] Generic AMD E350 Support

Graeme Russ graeme.russ at gmail.com
Tue Oct 16 04:45:43 CEST 2012


Hi Peter,

Thanks for the quick response

On Tue, Oct 16, 2012 at 1:34 PM, Peter Stuge <peter at stuge.se> wrote:
> Graeme Russ wrote:
>> E350, I'm inclined to assume that this could be used as a solid
>> foundation for the I35CT. Is this a valid assumption to make?
>
> Sure.
>
>
>> What would be the best approach to porting coreboot to the I35CT?
>
> Build an E350M1 image and try it out.

Figured that would be the case :)

>
>
>> What tricks and traps can I expect?
>
> The board will not boot and you will need to learn how to debug
> firmware. You will also need to study the AMD-contributed code under
> vendorcode/ and try to make sense of the hundreds of settings that
> you will need to adapt to your board design, after you have reverse
> engineered how the mainboard layout differs from the E350M1.
>
> Absolute minimum requirements are some kind of flash programmer and a
> null modem serial cable. A logic analyzer is helpful.

My investigations so far have led me to the fact that Qotom make the
PC - The motherboard is made by somebody else. I don't know the
motherboard is made by, but most likely a not widely know Chinese
manufacturer selling en-mass to EOMs. I will need to physically remove
the board and look for some identifying features.

So far I have found a IT8718F LPC I/O chip, so the bios is in an SPI
flash. I have an in-circuit SPI programmer, but there is no header on
the motherboard to get at the flash chip - I may need to jury-rig some
kind of connection to the flash chip (as soon as I locate it). Apart
from the APU, South Bridge, IT8718F and SPI flash there are only a
couple of 8-pin chips plus the Ethernet PHY and (I think) a HDMI
driver.

The APU and south bridge are, of course, covered by heatsinks. Can I
assume a particular south-bridge chip (of course I can just install
Linux and find out)

> Depending on your experience and skill should expect to spend some
> months on the project.

I have a fair bit of experience (x86 port of U-Boot) so once I get
access to the Flash, I should be able to hack it pretty quickly.

Does the E350M1 port fully support booting and running Linux
(including PCIe etc.)?

Regards,

Graeme




More information about the coreboot mailing list