[Tfug] Coreboot

[Zack Williams]

On Wed, Nov 18, 2015 at 2:13 PM, Steve B <steveb7 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Would anyone on the listserv have experience with either Coreboot or
> Libreboot? I'm thinking about picking up a second hand laptop and using
> either of these in place of the traditional BIOS. From my reading so far
> they will not work with anything newer than a C2D and the list of supported
> laptops is fairly short. Additionally it seems some laptops BIOS can be
> flashed while others may require more hands-on work to flash the BIOS.

flashrom can flash most systems, and if you have trouble with it or
have a bad flash, a cheap flasher like the Bus Pirate can easily flash
most SPI and similar chips.   Easier than trying to deal with most
"boot into DOS, hope it works" systems, if you can find the actual
image to write to the chip.

As far as Core/Libreboot, you're best bet is to look for a supported
laptop than to try to hack your own, unless you have a lot of
knowledge about how the board is laid out, what's hooked to what, etc.

The reason only older devices are supported is usually later Intel
chipsets have AMT (active management tech) that provides somewhat of a
backdoor into the system, mainly for administrative purposes, and that
was introduced in the i# lines of processors, and made the boot ROM
much more complex.

- Zack