MSI PRO Z690-A DDR4 WiFi Support Begins Landing In Upstream Coreboot

[phoronix]

Phoronix: MSI PRO Z690-A DDR4 WiFi Support Begins Landing In Upstream Coreboot

The past few months we have been closely covering the Coreboot port to an MSI retail motherboard for Intel Alder Lake. This port carried out by the 3mdeb consulting firm has been with their downstream "Dasharo" firmware based on Coreboot while as of yesterday the motherboard port has begun landing in upstream Coreboot...

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MSI-Z690-A-Upstream-Coreboot

[PluMGMK]

With the coreboot port, would it support Legacy (non-UEFI) boot? I'm guessing the answer is no, since the board probably lacks some hardware support, but maybe someone here has more knowledge on that…

[zir_blazer]

With the coreboot port, would it support Legacy (non-UEFI) boot? I'm guessing the answer is no, since the board probably lacks some hardware support, but maybe someone here has more knowledge on that…

There are no Hardware limitations that doesn't allow you to use SeaBIOS as a Coreboot payload, but it would have increased costs for little win. Most people that are going to build a new system are likely going to be using UEFI anyways. There are few use cases for BIOS support, like using an old Video Card with no UEFI GOP compatible Option ROM or moving an old disk with a MBR Partition Table to the new system and wanting to boot from it.

[binarybanana]

You can compile OVMF together with a SeaBIOS blob and it'll support booting the BIOS way. Depending on how much OVMF was modified to work as coreboot payload it might just work if you compile it yourself with BIOS support.

[zir_blazer]

You can compile OVMF together with a SeaBIOS blob and it'll support booting the BIOS way. Depending on how much OVMF was modified to work as coreboot payload it might just work if you compile it yourself with BIOS support.

Yes, you can use SeaBIOS as a CSM for TianoCore and have something analogous to what standard propietary Firmware does, but that is a very little tested code path. A few years ago I tried to do that on a VM with OVMF + CSM using precompiled binaries from Kraxel (One of the image has CSM) to install Windows XP x64, and the installer failed due to having detected 0 MB of RAM when the minimum was 64. Not expecting it to fare any better on native.

[PluMGMK]

Yes, you can use SeaBIOS as a CSM for TianoCore and have something analogous to what standard propietary Firmware does, but that is a very little tested code path. A few years ago I tried to do that on a VM with OVMF + CSM using precompiled binaries from Kraxel (One of the image has CSM) to install Windows XP x64, and the installer failed due to having detected 0 MB of RAM when the minimum was 64. Not expecting it to fare any better on native.

Interesting… Yeah, I'm guessing there'd be all sorts of issues on hardware that's not designed for Legacy booting. I'd be worried if the old-fashioned PIC/PIT/DMA emulation would even work when the hardware's not designed for it… (or is it all done in SMM?)