Laptop: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 05:25, 30 December 2008

Recent Progress of coreboot on Laptops

The VIA vx700 and vx800 chipsets have recently become popular in many netbook designs. Most of these netbooks are being produced by Quanta for several different OEM's.

VIA has recently released open documentation for the vx700 and vx800 chipsets at the VIA Download Portal and open documentation for the latest Unichrome graphics controllers. VIA has also released binary unichrome drivers with 2D and 3D accel support for Ubuntu 8.04 and 8.10 as well as source for 2D at VIA Linux Portal.

VIA is currently developing coreboot support for the vx800 chipset. openChrome support including 2D and 3D accel is also in the works for many new chipsets including the vx700 and vx800.

The remaining issue with supporting these and other similar netbooks may be open firmware support for the Embedded Controller (EC). The most common EC's in these netbooks are the KB3910 or KB3886 from ENE Technology. The ENE EC's are 8051 based and are used to support keyboard scan, lid open/closed, battery charging, power management, etc.

coreboot may work with the "stock" firmware. This may still be a challenge because "we don't know what we don't know". Behavior at runtime is fairly standardized, but we don't know what we need to do for initialization - do we need to set up registers, put in tables, kick things, or will it all Just Work (TM)?

The ENE KB3700 may be very similar to the other ENE EC's.

More discussion and info on the ENE EC's:

VIA has a list of many netbooks at VIA Partner Mobility Devices.

VIA also has information on other mobile platforms at VIA Mobility Platform.

The Quanta IL1 vx800 based reference design covers similar models/clones such as:

One Mini A110/A115/A120/A140/A150/A470
Airis Kira 100/350/740
Norhtec Gecko
Pioneer DreamBook Light IL1
CTL IL1 The CTL IL1 is available in the USA at Amazon.com
ACi Ethos 7
BDSI Deep Blue H1

Other vx800 based netbooks:

There are still a few netbook designs currently on the market that use the VIA vx700 chipset.

There are also several AMD 690/600 laptops still available that may be candidates as well:

Intel Atom with i945 chipset netbooks:

A few earlier coreboot discussions on laptops are linked here, you might get useful information out of them:

Laptop Survey (Old)

This page attempts to list laptops to find out which one might be easiest to port coreboot to.

Make	Type	Model	CPU	Chipset	Video	Super I/O	Micro	Flash Chip	Flash Size	Flash Socketed	Flash Type	Still Made	Major Obstacle	Owner
Panasonic	Toughbook CF-25	CF-25LJM8EAM	P166MMX	430TX	MagicGraph 128ZV NM2093		Renesas 3886	SST 29EE020	256 kB	no		no		Miernik
Toshiba	Libretto 50M	PA1243CM	P133	custom FPGA	C&T 65550							no		Miernik
Sony	Vaio Picturebook	PCG-C1XD	P2 400	443ZX	MagicMedia 256AV NM2200			M29W004BT	512 kB	no		no		Miernik (broken)
Sony	Vaio Picturebook	PCG-C1X	P266MMX	430TX	MagicMedia 256AV NM????							no		Miernik (stolen)
Gericom	Webboy	340S2	PIII	SiS630	SiS630	PC87393VJG	PC87570	Winbond 29C020	256 kB	yes	PLCC			Norbert Schmidt
Highscreen	XD	14-C1700	Intel Celeron 1.7 GHz	SiS650	SiS65x/M650/740	PC87391(?)	?	EON EN29F040(A)	512 kB	yes	PLCC	no	No SIS650 docs	Uwe Hermann
HP	Omnibook	XE3(L)	PIII, 750 MHz	Intel 82371MB PIIX4M	?	SMSC FDC37N869	?	?	?	no	PLCC	?	?	Uwe Hermann
Fujitsu-Siemens	Lifebook	S-4572	PIII, 750 MHz	Intel 82440MX	ATI Rage Mobility P/M [1002:4c52]	SMSC FDC37N769	?	Fujitsu MBM29F400T¹	?	no	SPI(?), TSOP(?)	no	No socketed PLCC, unknown EC	Uwe Hermann

¹ According to the vendor BIOS update tool.

Further Links:

Who really makes your laptop?

There are several various brands of laptops, but there are only a few actual laptop makers.

Name brand companies like Hewlet Packard, Compaq, IBM, Dell, Gateway, Sony, Micron, Toshiba and others; including Alienware and Voodoo do not make their own laptops. The exceptions are Asus and Apple, and even Apple doesn't make all of their laptops.

Original Design Manufacturers (ODM) make the laptops for Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEM). They in turn, add their preloaded hard drives and sell them to consumers. This is why a laptop is a bit more complicated to support with coreboot. The OEM's may not even have all the specifications for the laptop since the ODM has done all the design and assembly.

Some Laptop ODMs are:

Quanta makes laptops for Sony, Dell, and IBM
Inventec and Arima make the Compaq line
Compal also makes IBM and Dell lines, as well as Hewlett Packard
Clevo makes the popular Alienware and Voodoo gaming laptops