Board:asus/a8v-e deluxe

This page describes how to use coreboot on the ASUS A8V-E Deluxe mainboard. It is maintained by Uwe Hermann.

The ASUS A8V-E Deluxe.

The ASUS A8V-E Deluxe.

The BIOS socket.

Status

Device/functionality	Status	Comments
CPU
CPU works	OK=lime | TODO=red | No=red | WIP=orange | Untested=yellow | N/A=lightgray | yellow }}" | OK	I'm using: CPU model AMD Sempron(tm) Processor 3200+
L1 cache enabled	OK=lime | TODO=red | No=red | WIP=orange | Untested=yellow | N/A=lightgray | yellow }}" | OK	CPU: L1 I Cache: 64K (64 bytes/line), D cache 64K (64 bytes/line)
L2 cache enabled	OK=lime | TODO=red | No=red | WIP=orange | Untested=yellow | N/A=lightgray | yellow }}" | OK	CPU: L2 Cache: 256K (64 bytes/line)
L3 cache enabled	OK=lime | TODO=red | No=red | WIP=orange | Untested=yellow | N/A=lightgray | yellow }}" | N/A
Multiple CPU support	OK=lime | TODO=red | No=red | WIP=orange | Untested=yellow | N/A=lightgray | yellow }}" | N/A
Multi-core support	OK=lime | TODO=red | No=red | WIP=orange | Untested=yellow | N/A=lightgray | yellow }}" | Untested	I don't have a multicore CPU to test with.
Hardware virtualization	OK=lime | TODO=red | No=red | WIP=orange | Untested=yellow | N/A=lightgray | yellow }}" | Untested
RAM
EDO	OK=lime | TODO=red | No=red | WIP=orange | Untested=yellow | N/A=lightgray | yellow }}" | N/A
SDRAM	OK=lime | TODO=red | No=red | WIP=orange | Untested=yellow | N/A=lightgray | yellow }}" | N/A
SO-DIMM	OK=lime | TODO=red | No=red | WIP=orange | Untested=yellow | N/A=lightgray | yellow }}" | N/A
DDR	OK=lime | TODO=red | No=red | WIP=orange | Untested=yellow | N/A=lightgray | yellow }}" | OK	Tested: One 256 MB DIMM in slot DIMM_B1 (see manual).
DDR2	OK=lime | TODO=red | No=red | WIP=orange | Untested=yellow | N/A=lightgray | yellow }}" | N/A
DDR3	OK=lime | TODO=red | No=red | WIP=orange | Untested=yellow | N/A=lightgray | yellow }}" | N/A
Dual channel support	OK=lime | TODO=red | No=red | WIP=orange | Untested=yellow | N/A=lightgray | yellow }}" | Untested
ECC support	OK=lime | TODO=red | No=red | WIP=orange | Untested=yellow | N/A=lightgray | yellow }}" | Untested
On-board Hardware
On-board IDE 3.5"	OK=lime | TODO=red | No=red | WIP=orange | Untested=yellow | N/A=lightgray | yellow }}" | OK	Tested: Mounting an IDE disk in Linux. Booting from IDE is untested.
On-board IDE 2.5"	OK=lime | TODO=red | No=red | WIP=orange | Untested=yellow | N/A=lightgray | yellow }}" | N/A
On-board SATA	OK=lime | TODO=red | No=red | WIP=orange | Untested=yellow | N/A=lightgray | yellow }}" | OK	Tested: SATA port 1 (hda in FILO). SATA port 2 doesn't seem to work, yet.
On-board SCSI	OK=lime | TODO=red | No=red | WIP=orange | Untested=yellow | N/A=lightgray | yellow }}" | N/A
On-board USB	OK=lime | TODO=red | No=red | WIP=orange | Untested=yellow | N/A=lightgray | yellow }}" | OK	Tested: USB keyboard on all 8 USB ports.
On-board VGA	OK=lime | TODO=red | No=red | WIP=orange | Untested=yellow | N/A=lightgray | yellow }}" | N/A
On-board Ethernet	OK=lime | TODO=red | No=red | WIP=orange | Untested=yellow | N/A=lightgray | yellow }}" | OK
On-board Audio	OK=lime | TODO=red | No=red | WIP=orange | Untested=yellow | N/A=lightgray | yellow }}" | OK
On-board Modem	OK=lime | TODO=red | No=red | WIP=orange | Untested=yellow | N/A=lightgray | yellow }}" | N/A
On-board FireWire	OK=lime | TODO=red | No=red | WIP=orange | Untested=yellow | N/A=lightgray | yellow }}" | Untested
On-board Smartcard reader	OK=lime | TODO=red | No=red | WIP=orange | Untested=yellow | N/A=lightgray | yellow }}" | N/A
On-board CompactFlash	OK=lime | TODO=red | No=red | WIP=orange | Untested=yellow | N/A=lightgray | yellow }}" | N/A
On-board PCMCIA	OK=lime | TODO=red | No=red | WIP=orange | Untested=yellow | N/A=lightgray | yellow }}" | N/A
On-board Wifi	OK=lime | TODO=red | No=red | WIP=orange | Untested=yellow | N/A=lightgray | yellow }}" | N/A
On-board Bluetooth	OK=lime | TODO=red | No=red | WIP=orange | Untested=yellow | N/A=lightgray | yellow }}" | N/A
On-board SD card reader	OK=lime | TODO=red | No=red | WIP=orange | Untested=yellow | N/A=lightgray | yellow }}" | N/A
Add-on slots/cards
ISA add-on cards	OK=lime | TODO=red | No=red | WIP=orange | Untested=yellow | N/A=lightgray | yellow }}" | N/A
Audio/Modem-Riser (AMR/CNR) cards	OK=lime | TODO=red | No=red | WIP=orange | Untested=yellow | N/A=lightgray | yellow }}" | N/A
PCI add-on cards	OK=lime | TODO=red | No=red | WIP=orange | Untested=yellow | N/A=lightgray | yellow }}" | OK	Tested: PCI VGA card in all 3 PCI slots.
Mini-PCI add-on cards	OK=lime | TODO=red | No=red | WIP=orange | Untested=yellow | N/A=lightgray | yellow }}" | N/A
Mini-PCI-Express add-on cards	OK=lime | TODO=red | No=red | WIP=orange | Untested=yellow | N/A=lightgray | yellow }}" | Unknown
PCI-X add-on cards	OK=lime | TODO=red | No=red | WIP=orange | Untested=yellow | N/A=lightgray | yellow }}" | N/A
AGP graphics cards	OK=lime | TODO=red | No=red | WIP=orange | Untested=yellow | N/A=lightgray | yellow }}" | N/A
PCI Express x1 add-on cards	OK=lime | TODO=red | No=red | WIP=orange | Untested=yellow | N/A=lightgray | yellow }}" | OK	Tested: PCI Express x1 network card in the first slot (nearer to CPU). Not sure if the other slot works OK.
PCI Express x2 add-on cards	OK=lime | TODO=red | No=red | WIP=orange | Untested=yellow | N/A=lightgray | yellow }}" | N/A
PCI Express x4 add-on cards	OK=lime | TODO=red | No=red | WIP=orange | Untested=yellow | N/A=lightgray | yellow }}" | N/A
PCI Express x8 add-on cards	OK=lime | TODO=red | No=red | WIP=orange | Untested=yellow | N/A=lightgray | yellow }}" | N/A
PCI Express x16 add-on cards	OK=lime | TODO=red | No=red | WIP=orange | Untested=yellow | N/A=lightgray | yellow }}" | OK	Tested: PCI Express x16 VGA card. Works using the ati X11 driver.
PCI Express x32 add-on cards	OK=lime | TODO=red | No=red | WIP=orange | Untested=yellow | N/A=lightgray | yellow }}" | N/A
HTX add-on cards	OK=lime | TODO=red | No=red | WIP=orange | Untested=yellow | N/A=lightgray | yellow }}" | N/A
Legacy / Super I/O
Floppy	OK=lime | TODO=red | No=red | WIP=orange | Untested=yellow | N/A=lightgray | yellow }}" | WIP	Doesn't seem to work, yet. Might be a Super I/O problem.
Serial port 1 (COM1)	OK=lime | TODO=red | No=red | WIP=orange | Untested=yellow | N/A=lightgray | yellow }}" | OK
Serial port 2 (COM2)	OK=lime | TODO=red | No=red | WIP=orange | Untested=yellow | N/A=lightgray | yellow }}" | N/A
Parallel port	OK=lime | TODO=red | No=red | WIP=orange | Untested=yellow | N/A=lightgray | yellow }}" | OK	Tested: Parallel-port JTAG adapter using openocd, works fine after modprobe ppdev.
PS/2 keyboard	OK=lime | TODO=red | No=red | WIP=orange | Untested=yellow | N/A=lightgray | yellow }}" | OK
PS/2 mouse	OK=lime | TODO=red | No=red | WIP=orange | Untested=yellow | N/A=lightgray | yellow }}" | OK
Game port	OK=lime | TODO=red | No=red | WIP=orange | Untested=yellow | N/A=lightgray | yellow }}" | OK	Works fine after modprobe analog and modprobe ns558. Tested using jscalibrator.
Infrared	OK=lime | TODO=red | No=red | WIP=orange | Untested=yellow | N/A=lightgray | yellow }}" | N/A
PC speaker	OK=lime | TODO=red | No=red | WIP=orange | Untested=yellow | N/A=lightgray | yellow }}" | OK
DiskOnChip	OK=lime | TODO=red | No=red | WIP=orange | Untested=yellow | N/A=lightgray | yellow }}" | N/A
Input
Trackpoint	OK=lime | TODO=red | No=red | WIP=orange | Untested=yellow | N/A=lightgray | yellow }}" | N/A
Touchpad	OK=lime | TODO=red | No=red | WIP=orange | Untested=yellow | N/A=lightgray | yellow }}" | N/A
Fn Hotkeys	OK=lime | TODO=red | No=red | WIP=orange | Untested=yellow | N/A=lightgray | yellow }}" | N/A
Fingerprint Reader	OK=lime | TODO=red | No=red | WIP=orange | Untested=yellow | N/A=lightgray | yellow }}" | N/A
Laptop
Docking VGA	OK=lime | TODO=red | No=red | WIP=orange | Untested=yellow | N/A=lightgray | yellow }}" | N/A
Docking LAN	OK=lime | TODO=red | No=red | WIP=orange | Untested=yellow | N/A=lightgray | yellow }}" | N/A
Docking USB	OK=lime | TODO=red | No=red | WIP=orange | Untested=yellow | N/A=lightgray | yellow }}" | N/A
Docking Audio	OK=lime | TODO=red | No=red | WIP=orange | Untested=yellow | N/A=lightgray | yellow }}" | N/A
Docking Displayport	OK=lime | TODO=red | No=red | WIP=orange | Untested=yellow | N/A=lightgray | yellow }}" | N/A
Thinklight	OK=lime | TODO=red | No=red | WIP=orange | Untested=yellow | N/A=lightgray | yellow }}" | N/A
Webcam	OK=lime | TODO=red | No=red | WIP=orange | Untested=yellow | N/A=lightgray | yellow }}" | N/A
Miscellaneous
Sensors / fan control	OK=lime | TODO=red | No=red | WIP=orange | Untested=yellow | N/A=lightgray | yellow }}" | OK	The k8temp module loads fine, the sensors tool outputs the CPU temperature correctly. The w83627ehf module (for various temperatures and fan speeds) works fine. Also, the eeprom and i2c-viapro / i2c-dev modules load fine.
Hardware watchdog	OK=lime | TODO=red | No=red | WIP=orange | Untested=yellow | N/A=lightgray | yellow }}" | Untested	The VT8237R seems to have a watchdog timer, but it's untested.
SMBus	OK=lime | TODO=red | No=red | WIP=orange | Untested=yellow | N/A=lightgray | yellow }}" | Unknown
CAN bus	OK=lime | TODO=red | No=red | WIP=orange | Untested=yellow | N/A=lightgray | yellow }}" | N/A
CPU frequency scaling	OK=lime | TODO=red | No=red | WIP=orange | Untested=yellow | N/A=lightgray | yellow }}" | WIP	Doesn't work, yet.
Other powersaving features	OK=lime | TODO=red | No=red | WIP=orange | Untested=yellow | N/A=lightgray | yellow }}" | N/A
ACPI	OK=lime | TODO=red | No=red | WIP=orange | Untested=yellow | N/A=lightgray | yellow }}" | Untested	Exact status unknown/untested. Originally implemented for ASUS A8V-E SE, might need some changes. Reboot and poweroff do work ok, though.
Reboot	OK=lime | TODO=red | No=red | WIP=orange | Untested=yellow | N/A=lightgray | yellow }}" | OK
Poweroff	OK=lime | TODO=red | No=red | WIP=orange | Untested=yellow | N/A=lightgray | yellow }}" | OK
Suspend	OK=lime | TODO=red | No=red | WIP=orange | Untested=yellow | N/A=lightgray | yellow }}" | Unknown
Nonstandard LEDs	OK=lime | TODO=red | No=red | WIP=orange | Untested=yellow | N/A=lightgray | yellow }}" | OK	There's a power-on LED on the board PCB, it lights up when the board is powered up.
High precision event timers (HPET)	OK=lime | TODO=red | No=red | WIP=orange | Untested=yellow | N/A=lightgray | yellow }}" | OK	The dmesg output has ACPI: HPET id: 0x102282a0 base: 0xfed00000, and hpet0: at MMIO 0xfed00000, IRQs 2, 8, 0, and hpet0: 3 32-bit timers, 14318180 Hz. Powertop reports a very good value of 9 wake-ups-from-idle per second, which indicates that HPET support might work ok.
Random number generator (RNG)	OK=lime | TODO=red | No=red | WIP=orange | Untested=yellow | N/A=lightgray | yellow }}" | N/A
Wake on modem ring	OK=lime | TODO=red | No=red | WIP=orange | Untested=yellow | N/A=lightgray | yellow }}" | Untested
Wake on LAN	OK=lime | TODO=red | No=red | WIP=orange | Untested=yellow | N/A=lightgray | yellow }}" | Untested
Wake on keyboard	OK=lime | TODO=red | No=red | WIP=orange | Untested=yellow | N/A=lightgray | yellow }}" | Untested
Wake on mouse	OK=lime | TODO=red | No=red | WIP=orange | Untested=yellow | N/A=lightgray | yellow }}" | Untested
TPM	OK=lime | TODO=red | No=red | WIP=orange | Untested=yellow | N/A=lightgray | yellow }}" | Unknown
Flashrom	OK=lime | TODO=red | No=red | WIP=orange | Untested=yellow | N/A=lightgray | yellow }}" | OK	Works fine with coreboot and with the proprietary BIOS. The board/chipset/flashrom can decode 1MB chips fine.

Hardware

• AMD K8
• VIA K8T890
• VIA VT8237R
• Winbond W83627EHF

lspci -tvnn

-[0000:00]-+-00.0  VIA Technologies, Inc. K8T890 Host Bridge [1106:0238]
           +-00.1  VIA Technologies, Inc. K8T890 Host Bridge [1106:1238]
           +-00.2  VIA Technologies, Inc. K8T890 Host Bridge [1106:2238]
           +-00.3  VIA Technologies, Inc. K8T890 Host Bridge [1106:3238]
           +-00.4  VIA Technologies, Inc. K8T890 Host Bridge [1106:4238]
           +-00.5  VIA Technologies, Inc. K8T890 I/O APIC Interrupt Controller [1106:5238]
           +-00.7  VIA Technologies, Inc. K8T890 Host Bridge [1106:7238]
           +-01.0-[0000:01]--
           +-02.0-[0000:02]--
           +-03.0-[0000:03]--
           +-03.1-[0000:04]--
           +-03.2-[0000:05]----00.0  Marvell Technology Group Ltd. 88E8053 PCI-E Gigabit Ethernet Controller [11ab:4362]
           +-03.3-[0000:06]--
           +-07.0 Marvell Technology Group Ltd. 88W8310 and 88W8000G [Libertas] 802.11g client chipset [11ab:1fa7]
           +-08.0 Texas Instruments TSB43AB22/A IEEE-1394a-2000 Controller (PHY/Link) [104c:8023]
           +-0f.0  VIA Technologies, Inc. VIA VT6420 SATA RAID Controller [1106:3149]
           +-0f.1  VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82C586A/B/VT82C686/A/B/VT823x/A/C PIPC Bus Master IDE [1106:0571]
           +-10.0  VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller [1106:3038]
           +-10.1  VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller [1106:3038]
           +-10.2  VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller [1106:3038]
           +-10.3  VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller [1106:3038]
           +-10.4  VIA Technologies, Inc. USB 2.0 [1106:3104]
           +-11.0  VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8237 ISA bridge [KT600/K8T800/K8T890 South] [1106:3227]
           +-11.5  VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8233/A/8235/8237 AC97 Audio Controller [1106:3059]
           +-11.6  VIA Technologies, Inc. AC'97 Modem Controller [1106:3068]
           +-18.0  Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] HyperTransport Technology Configuration [1022:1100]
           +-18.1  Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] Address Map [1022:1101]
           +-18.2  Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] DRAM Controller [1022:1102]
           \-18.3  Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] Miscellaneous Control [1022:1103]

Building coreboot

Currently there is no special target for the ASUS A8V-E Deluxe in coreboot. Instead, we use the ASUS A8V-E SE target.

First, place your payload (usually FILO) into /tmp/filo.elf and build coreboot as usual:

$ cd target
$ ./buildtarget asus/a8v-e_se
$ cd asus/a8v-e_se/asus_a8v-e_se
$ make

The resulting coreboot.rom (512 KB) can now be flashed on a ROM chip.

It's possible to use a 1 MB ROM chip on this board. You'll have to change ROM_SIZE in targets/asus/a8v-e_se/Config.lb to make coreboot.rom bigger for that.

Booting coreboot

• Booting from SATA port 1 works using FILO and this config (I have my root filesystem on /dev/sda2 as viewed from Linux):

 kernel=hda2:/vmlinuz initrd=/initrd.img root=/dev/sda2 console=tty0 console=ttyS0,115200

• Booting from SATA port 2 doesn't yet work, I'll investigate.
• Booting from IDE doesn't yet work, I'll investigate.

Comparing boot time

This is an ad-hoc test with pretty much no attempts at optimizing boot-times.

• BIOS: I disabled the boot logo, SATA RAID blob execution (i.e. I set "IDE mode" in the BIOS menu), floppy detection/usage in order to kill the most obvious delays.
• coreboot: Stock svn as of r3198, but with console logging level increased to 9 (i.e. slower bootup is to be expected).

Both the proprietary BIOS and coreboot do execute the VGA BIOS ROM from the PCI-E x16 graphics card. I'm booting from a SATA drive, using FILO in coreboot and pointing it at the menu.lst on the SATA drive, and GRUB when booting with the proprietary BIOS. The OS is a standard Debian unstable installation with 2.6.24 Linux kernel.

BIOS	Power up — OS loader	Linux — shell	Summary
Vendor BIOS (boot from SATA disk)	24s	24s	48s
coreboot (boot from SATA disk)	9s	24s	33s

I, the copyright holder of this work, hereby release it into the public domain. This applies worldwide. In case this is not legally possible: I grant anyone the right to use this work for any purpose, without any conditions, unless such conditions are required by law.