Laptop

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Revision as of 17:11, 23 January 2010 by Uwe (talk | contribs) (→‎Laptop Survey: Add IBM T30 info.)
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The wiki is being retired!

Documentation is now handled by the same processes we use for code: Add something to the Documentation/ directory in the coreboot repo, and it will be rendered to https://doc.coreboot.org/. Contributions welcome!

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)?


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:

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 Video 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 MagicGraph 256AV [10c8:0005] SMSC FDC37N958FR in Super I/O AM29F040B 512KB yes PLCC UH
Dell Latitude C610 PIII, 1.2 GHz Intel i830 ATI Mobility Radeon M6-P LY [1002:4c59] SMSC LPC47N252 in Super I/O SST49LF004A 512KB no PLCC CybFr
Fujitsu-S. Lifebook S-4572 PIII, 750 MHz Intel 82440MX ATI Rage Mobility P/M [1002:4c52] SMSC FDC37N769 ? Fujitsu MBM29F400T1 ? no TSOP(?) UH
Fujitsu-S. Lifebook S7110 Intel Core™2 Duo T7200 Intel i945/ICH7 Intel GMA950 SMSC LPC47N217 Fujitsu MB90378 Spansion S25FL008A2 1024 kB no SPI twice11
Gericom Webboy 340S2 PIII SiS630 SiS630 PC87393VJG PC87570 Winbond 29C020 256 kB yes PLCC NS
Highscreen XD 14-C1700 Intel Celeron 1.7 GHz SiS650 SiS65x/M650/740 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 Radeon Mobility 7500 NSC PC87392 H8S 64F3169ATE10 ST M50FW080N5 1024 kB no TSOP (FWH) edgecase
One A110 VIA C7-M ULV 1.0 GHz VIA VX800 VIA VX800 ? ENE KB3310 ? ? no ? UH
Panasonic Toughbook CF-25 P166MMX FW82439TX (430TX)/FW82371AB MagicGraph 128ZV NM2093 NSC PC87336VJG Renesas 3886 SST 29EE020 256 kB no Miernik
Sony Vaio Picturebook PCG-C1XD P2 400 443ZX MagicMedia 256AV NM2200 M29W004BT 512 kB no Miernik
Sony Vaio Picturebook PCG-C1X P266MMX 430TX MagicMedia 256AV NM???? Miernik
Toshiba Libretto 50M PA1243CM P133 custom FPGA C&T 65550 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

Further Links:

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