coreboot on fitlet

Post Reply
eroihn
Posts: 9
Joined: Fri Jan 16, 2015 6:11 pm

coreboot on fitlet

Post by eroihn »

In the comparison table on http://www.fit-pc.com/web/products/specifications/, the "Bootloader" field for the fitlets only lists "TBA". Why is this? I would expect that anything other than Coreboot for a bootloader cannot possibly make any sense, since all commercial BIOSes are known to be slow und unmodifiable. Also, the Coreboot solution is free software, so why would you pay any BIOS vendor, who tries to sell you any worse solution, especially since Irad Stavi says on http://www.fit-pc.com/web/products/mintbox-mini/ that "CompuLab and the Linux Mint team share a passion for openness and elegance"?

Moreover, the pictures of the fitlet mainboard only show soldered components. I think, it would make sense to use a socket for the boot flash, so that people can upgrade the chip to a larger one, if they need more flash memory, or to replace a defective chip. Also, users could easily use UEFI-free chips at no extra manufacturing cost, if the chips can easily be swapped, while still keeping the original ones, in case they need them. There seem to be sockets that have about the same footprint as a soldered solution, for instance, there is a socketed boot flash in http://www.shuttle.eu/products/slim/ds437/overview/, which at first I didn't even recognize as socketed, because it uses a clever plastic housing as can be seen in the pictures on this site: http://www.larsenassociates.com/Chupond ... t8-16.html

Otherwise, the fitlet seems to be nearly perfect. I should also note, that I like the detail, that the power button in the renderings shows a green LED and that the Ethernet connectors have activity LEDs. That computer from Shuttle, that I linked to earlier, uses a blue LED to show that it is powered on and its Ethernet ports have no link LEDs, so that you cannot visually identify cable connectivity problems. I find both of these issues extremely annoying about that computer from Shuttle, especially since it would have cost them virtually nothing to get these right. So please keep your LEDs green and red and please don't even think about ever using these annoying blue-colored LEDs.

So, please provide a Coreboot BIOS (http://coreboot.org/) for fitlet and also use socketed boot flash chips. That would make your product truly great. According to the Coreboot wiki page, there is already some existing work for a an AMD board with an FT3b connector, which I believe the Mullins processor in the fitlet also uses: http://www.coreboot.org/Supported_Motherboards#2014W41

irads

Re: coreboot on fitlet

Post by irads »

Thank you for the thoughtful post.

We evaluated coreboot for fitlet and found that we still have to rely on a commercial BIOS.

Surprisingly, it is a decision derived from openness...
If we were making a closed down platform where we control end-to-end - from component selection all the way to the application and deployment, then it would make sense to deploy coreboot, stabilize the system and ship it.
fitlet is not like that. It will often be sold barebone and the user will install his RAM, storage, devices, OS and applications. We must do our best to minimize the compatibility issues and today this is better achieved with a commercial BIOS.

As for socketed SPI flash - in fitlet - bill-of-material, space and ruggedness are major considerations. Soldered down SPI flash is ideal by these considerations. That said, if coreboot developers like fitlet as development platform we can provide good development environment for that.

eroihn
Posts: 9
Joined: Fri Jan 16, 2015 6:11 pm

Re: coreboot on fitlet

Post by eroihn »

That sounds plausible. However, I'd like to point you to this announcement post, in which some developers ask for general feedback from potentially interested commercial parties: http://www.coreboot.org/pipermail/coreb ... 00020.html Possibly, filling out their survey might help to bring the project to a state in which you might consider it for your products.

I guess, I'll mention fitlet on the project's general mailing list, since developers might find it attractive and be interested in its support. By "providing a good development environment", do you mean that you could provide the necessary documentation for interested developers to implement the board support for fitlet?

Also, from your description, it sounds like MintBox Mini would qualify as a native deployment platform, since there you provide RAM, SSD and OS in one package.

irads

Re: coreboot on fitlet

Post by irads »

Also, from your description, it sounds like MintBox Mini would qualify as a native deployment platform, since there you provide RAM, SSD and OS in one package.
That's true, but we cannot fork MintBox from the underlying platform.

Post Reply

Return to “fitlet BIOS”