[coreboot] Tinkering with old and new motherboards
David Griffith
dave at 661.org
Fri Jul 13 13:27:05 CEST 2012
On Fri, 13 Jul 2012, Oliver Schinagl wrote:
> On 13-07-12 12:14, David Griffith wrote:
>>
>> I have an old motherboard which I'd like to experiment on and have my
>> eyes on a bleeding-edge board. The old one is a Shuttle AN35N Ultra
>> (socket 1). The new one is an MSI 990FXA-GD80V2 (socket AM3+).
>> Neither of these appear on the list of supported motherboards.
>>
>> Tinkering with the old board should be relatively safe because the BIOS
>> lives in a socketed PLCC. I can't seem to figure out what sort of
>> package the firmware in the newer one lives in. None of the photos
>> I've found of it seem to have good enough resolution to tell. Can I
>> get some help here?
>>
> I found http://www.msi.com/pic/product/five_pictures1_2400_20110531112742.jpg
>
> and I have to agree, the resolution is a bit to low to recognize the bios on.
>
> My personal 'best bet' is the 'green' chip in the left bottom corner. If
> you look at the south-bridge heat-sink, under the middle leg of the 'm'
> there's a small SOIC8 chip with a green sticker. It is surrounded by 3
> caps. That's the most logical bet, as the sticker probably has bios
> version number on it.
I think I see it. In the bottom-left there is a white fan header labeled
"SYSFAN4". Just northeast of that is the chip. Am I right?
I thought I was going to have to jerry-rig something messy to replace the
SOIC8 with a socket of some sort, but I see that someone[1] found a source
of compact and relatively affordable sockets. The clearance with that
10-pin header just south of the firmware chip looks rather tight. I also
see some adapters that puts a socket on an SOIC footprint and then a DIP
adapter is plugged in.
[1] http://randomprojects.org/wiki/SOIC8_socket
--
David Griffith
dave at 661.org
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