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.

3mdeb has done a great job bringing Dasharo/Coreboot to a readily available, not too expensive MSI motherboard that works with current-generation Intel Core "Alder Lake" motherboards. It's still very rare seeing Coreboot support for a modern desktop motherboard that is available through retail channels.

At the end of June I posted my full review of the Dasharo/Coreboot port to the MSI Z690-A DDR WiFi motherboard and this Dasharo 1.0 release has continued working out great for an Alder Lake desktop system. Granted, the Intel FSP and related bits there are still binary blobs.

Since yesterday the Coreboot port began landing upstream thanks to the work of Michał Żygowski and the other engineers at 3mdeb. See the latest Coreboot Git with more of the enablement work having been reviewed and merged today. This also includes related Coreboot work like enabling Alder Lake P and Alder Lake S support for the public FSP. It's great seeing this work now available with upstream too.

Those wanting to learn more about the Dasharo port including the readily available firmware binaries that can be flashed to this MSI motherboard, see Dasharo.com. And if you didn't already, check out my review. This motherboard can currently be found for about $215 USD from the likes of Amazon (affiliate link) if wanting to dabble around with a modern Coreboot-powered Alder Lake desktop.