[coreboot] Possible support for Lippert Cool LiteRunner

[Carl-Daniel Hailfinger]

On 12.03.2008 14:29, Martin Trautmann wrote:
> In-Reply-To: <47D7CFC6.5070203 at gmx.net>
>
> On 2008-03-12 13:42, Carl-Daniel Hailfinger wrote:
>   
>> On 12.03.2008 06:53, Martin Trautmann wrote:
>>     
>>> Jordan Crouse wrote:
>>>       
>>>> There are some other people on this list who are also interested in
>>>> supporting the GX and 5535, I'll let them speak up.
>>>>
>>>>         
>>> Here I am. Personally, I got some major trouble how to understand coreboot:
>>>
>>> - Migration from v2 to v3: Is there any help and docu how code should be
>>> ported from v2 to v3 - or is v3 that much cleaner (that means completely
>>> new and different) so that it would be better to write new code from
>>> scratch?
>>>       
>> Reading the design document in the v3 tree and the mainboard specific
>> code for one mainboard will give you a pretty good overview of the v3
>> structure (and to some extent, code quality).
>>     
>
> Ah, thanks. I checked
> http://www.coreboot.org/Documentation#Port_Guides - v2/v1 only
> http://www.coreboot.org/Development_Guidelines - general only
> http://www.coreboot.org/Developer_Manual - "It currently covers coreboot v2"
> http://www.coreboot.org/Coreboot_Options -  does not name a version,
>     but http://www.coreboot.org/Welcome_to_coreboot references it as
>     [[corebootv2 Options]]
>
> http://coreboot.org/viewvc/trunk/ shows v1 and v2 only
>
> http://www.coreboot.org/Download_coreboot names "There is an archive of
> snapshots available at qa.coreboot.org" - which is v2 only!?
>   

http://coreboot.org/viewvc/?root=coreboot-v3 has a link to download a
specific revision as tarball.


> I may obtain v3 docu by subversion only? I had checked coreboot-v3/doc/
> which does not hold that much info. It's mainly a newboot.lyx
>
> Did I miss the essential v3 docu anywhere, e.g. as .pdf?
>   

doc/newboot.lyx can be converted to pdf and it is THE coreboot v3 design
doc. It may be missing some recent developments, but most of the
contents are pretty up-to-date and the design described there has not
changed.


>> The architecture of v3 is completely different from v2 and porting means
>> a lot of refactoring. Depending on how baroque the old code is, you
>> might want to work from existing v3 code instead (this is especially
>> true for GX and CS5535 code).
>>     
>
> I hope so - but the only info I know up to now are the makefiles for
>
>   coreboot-v3/ ->
> northbridge/amd/geodelx/
> southbridge/amd/cs5536/
> arch/x86/ -> geodelx
> and probably several from mainboard/ according to
> http://www.coreboot.org/Supported_Motherboards#Motherboards_supported_in_coreboot_v3
>
> There's one so called tutorial
> http://www.coreboot.org/PC_Engines_ALIX1.C_Build_Tutorial
> which does not teach me very much.
>   

The "Tutorial" is a misnomer and I'll probably rename all those
"tutorials" which are just verbose status pages to "status".


> The best I found is
> http://www.coreboot.org/AMD_Geode_Porting_Guide
>
>
> ... but that's still far away from any docu that would teach me how to
> build a new port for v3.
>   

newboot.lyx should have most of the info you need. If anything is
missing, please describe what you are missing there so that we can
improve the doc.


>>> - BIOS decompiler: Is there any BIOS decompiler which would tell me the
>>> current operations which have to be done?
>>>       
>> There are some tools to analyze proprietary BIOS images, but the person
>> doing the analysis is not allowed to use the results to write code
>> because it would violate clean room principles. The best advice I can
>> give is to avoid touching/analyzing proprietary BIOS code/images,
>> especially if hardware documentation is readily available.
>>     
>
> There's much of docu (too much for the beginning) for the GX2 and CS5535,
> but none for its bios and this special board from AMD.
>   

Which special board are you referring to? And why would you want to read
documentation for any other BIOSes for Geode? Besides that, there is
quite some documentation available for ROM porting to the Geode GX.
Hint: Google for "geoderom gx" and the first hit is already what you may
be looking for.


Regards,
Carl-Daniel

-- 
http://www.hailfinger.org/