[coreboot] Asus M5A88-v evo

[HighlyCaffeinated]

>I bought an M5A88-v Motherboard (
>http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131733&Tpk=m5a88-v
>) and an amd FX-4170 (
>http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819106009 )
>
>I use Fedora 16 on this machine. Compiled coreboot with a vga bios
>from my board, flashed it, and in doing managed to brick the board. I
>have another computer I was able to use to flash a vendor bios onto
>the rom chip. Compiled again without video bios, and used a
>pci-express graphics card. Still no luck. I'm running the machine with
>stock firmware, but I'd love to be able to try out coreboot and
>seabios.
>
>With Coreboot on it, The machine powered on and the fans spun up.
>That's about it. No HD activity beyond power being applied. Ethernet
>port never powered, screen never came out of power save. Seems to have
>been bricked.
>
>Any ideas?
>
>Jonathan Bennett

Jonathan-
I'm very new to Coreboot myself, but high on the list of things to acquire I'd put a second flash chip and a serial crossover cable. 

I'm playing with one of the E350M1 boards with an 8-pin DIP SPI ROM onboard, and I have a laptop next to it running Windows. By running a header cable from the E350M1 to a serial Null Modem cable, then into a serial-to-USB adapter plugged into the Windows machine you can monitor the full progress of the Coreboot load. This makes it significantly easier to understand what is (or is not) happening during the boot process. Highly recommended. 
Before messing with the BIOS I got Linux up and running on the E350M1. Booting the board to the factory 4MB ROM allows me to build and flash the replacement 8MB ROM. The nice thing about using a ROM chip that is larger than factory is that flashrom -w verifies the coreboot.rom will fit on the chip so you don't accidentally try to flash the wrong ROM chip. It's saved me once already!

Just a couple of pointers from someone in a similar situation. Mine boots now (yay!).

One thing I have noticed - at least on my board - is that I cannot flash the ROM when I have booted from Coreboot. I MUST boot from the factory ROM to sucessfully flash the chip. I haven't yet looked into that, but plan to as time is available.

Good luck
-Todd