Laptop: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 17:15, 23 January 2010

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 KB3310, KB3910 and KB3920 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)?

ENE KB3700 datasheet.

The Quanta IL1 reference design seems to use ENE3310 controller. The q1d25i.rom was examined. The EC code is on 0xFFF00000 on One Mini A110. Its 64KB big HOLE0.ROM.

8051 simulator

OpenEC Firmware OpenEC Project

Example code that makes use of the KB3310's "Index IO" access functions.

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 More CTL IL1 info with tear-down pics.
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

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

Vendor	Model	CPU	Chipset	Super I/O	EC	Flash Chip	Flash Size	Flash S.	Flash T.	Owner
ASUS	S96F/Z96F	Intel Core™2 Duo T7400	Intel i945/ICH7	ITE IT8510E	in Super I/O	?	?	?	?	macavity
Dell	Latitude CPi A366XT	PII, 360 MHz	Intel 440BX	SMSC FDC37N958FR	in Super I/O	AM29F040B	512KB	yes	PLCC	UH
Dell	Latitude C610	PIII, 1.2 GHz	Intel i830	SMSC LPC47N252	in Super I/O	SST49LF004A	512KB	no	PLCC	CybFr
Fujitsu-S.	Lifebook S-4572	PIII, 750 MHz	Intel 82440MX	SMSC FDC37N769	?	Fujitsu MBM29F400T¹	?	no	TSOP(?)	UH
Fujitsu-S.	Lifebook S7110	Intel Core™2 Duo T7200	Intel i945/ICH7	SMSC LPC47N217	Fujitsu MB90378	Spansion S25FL008A²	1024 kB	no	SPI	twice11
Gericom	Webboy 340S2	PIII	SiS630	PC87393VJG	PC87570	Winbond 29C020	256 kB	yes	PLCC	NS
Highscreen	XD 14-C1700	Intel Celeron 1.7 GHz	SiS650	NSC PC87391(?)	?	EON EN29F040(A)	512 kB	yes	PLCC	UH
HP	Omnibook XE3(L)	PIII, 750 MHz	Intel 82371MB/PIIX4M	SMSC FDC37N869	NSC PC87570	SST 28SF040A	512 kB	no	PLCC	UH
IBM	Thinkpad T30	Intel P4 Mobile, 1.8 GHz	Intel i845/ICH3-M	NSC PC87392	H8S 64F3169ATE10	ST M50FW080N5	1024 kB	no	TSOP40 / FWH	edgecase
One	A110	VIA C7-M ULV 1.0 GHz	VIA VX800	?	ENE KB3310	?	?	no	?	UH
Panasonic	Toughbook CF-25	P166MMX	FW82439TX (430TX)/FW82371AB	NSC PC87336VJG	Renesas 3886	SST 29EE020	256 kB	no		Miernik
Sony	Vaio Picturebook PCG-C1XD	P2 400	443ZX			M29W004BT	512 kB	no		Miernik
Sony	Vaio Picturebook PCG-C1X	P266MMX	430TX							Miernik
Toshiba	Libretto 50M PA1243CM	P133	custom FPGA							Miernik
Toshiba	Satellite A80-117	Intel Celeron	Intel 915GM/ICH6	SMSC LPC47N217	ENE KB910	?	1024 kB	no	TSOP (?)	UH

¹ According to the vendor BIOS update tool. ² Nice thing: EC/Flash is not shared, so you can erase the whole flash during system operation (this was tested).

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