Board:asus/a8n e
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!
This HOWTO explains how to use coreboot on the ASUS A8N-E board.
Status
Device/functionality | Status | Comments | ||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
CPU | ||||||||
CPU works | OK=lime | TODO=red | No=red | WIP=orange | Untested=yellow | N/A=lightgray | yellow }}" | OK | Tested: AMD Athlon(tm) 64 Processor 3000+. | ||||||
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: 512K (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 | |||||||
Hardware virtualization | OK=lime | TODO=red | No=red | WIP=orange | Untested=yellow | N/A=lightgray | yellow }}" | N/A | |||||||
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 with one 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 | The board supports ECC according to the manual. | ||||||
On-board Hardware | ||||||||
On-board IDE 3.5" | OK=lime | TODO=red | No=red | WIP=orange | Untested=yellow | N/A=lightgray | yellow }}" | OK | Tested: Primary IDE (master and slave) and secondary IDE (master and slave). | ||||||
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 }}" | WIP | Port 3 (hde in FILO) and 4 (hdg in FILO) on the board work fine. Port 1 and 2 don't seem to work, this is being investigated. | ||||||
On-board SCSI | OK=lime | TODO=red | No=red | WIP=orange | Untested=yellow | N/A=lightgray | yellow }}" | Unknown | |||||||
On-board USB | OK=lime | TODO=red | No=red | WIP=orange | Untested=yellow | N/A=lightgray | yellow }}" | OK | Tested: USB keyboard (on each of the 10 possible 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 }}" | Untested | |||||||
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 }}" | N/A | |||||||
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 three PCI slots. | ||||||
Mini-PCI add-on cards | OK=lime | TODO=red | No=red | WIP=orange | Untested=yellow | N/A=lightgray | yellow }}" | Unknown | |||||||
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 }}" | Unknown | |||||||
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 }}" | Untested | |||||||
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 }}" | Untested | |||||||
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 }}" | Untested | |||||||
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 }}" | Untested | |||||||
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: modprobe ppdev, further tests were not performed. | ||||||
PS/2 keyboard | OK=lime | TODO=red | No=red | WIP=orange | Untested=yellow | N/A=lightgray | yellow }}" | OK | use Rev. >=3610 | ||||||
PS/2 mouse | OK=lime | TODO=red | No=red | WIP=orange | Untested=yellow | N/A=lightgray | yellow }}" | WIP | Doesn't seem to work yet, this is being investigated. | ||||||
Game port | OK=lime | TODO=red | No=red | WIP=orange | Untested=yellow | N/A=lightgray | yellow }}" | Untested | |||||||
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 | Tested: sensors reports K8 core temp. (kernel module k8temp) and various other values from the IT8712F Super I/O (kernel module it87). | ||||||
Hardware watchdog | OK=lime | TODO=red | No=red | WIP=orange | Untested=yellow | N/A=lightgray | yellow }}" | N/A | |||||||
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 }}" | No | Needs (at least partial) ACPI support. | ||||||
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 }}" | No | There's no ACPI implementation for this board. | ||||||
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 }}" | No | |||||||
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 green LED on the board which is enabled when the board is powered-on. Works out of the box, no special coreboot support required. | ||||||
High precision event timers (HPET) | OK=lime | TODO=red | No=red | WIP=orange | Untested=yellow | N/A=lightgray | yellow }}" | OK | The hardware supports it, but you currently need the hpet=force Linux kernel parameter. Reduces the number of wakeups in powertop drastically. | ||||||
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 }}" | N/A | The on-board ethernet device doesn't seem to support WOL (also not mentioned in the manual). | ||||||
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 when booted with BIOS and also with coreboot. |
Before you begin
The ASUS A8N-E is an Athlon64 Socket 939 board (nforce 4 ultra) with socketed BIOS sold around 120 (mostly out of stock in 8/2007; used items at eBay ~ 20-35). It already boots coreboot. Latest legacy BIOS is from May 2006 v.1013. Socket 939 Athlons do not have Pacifica Virtualization.
The ASUS A8N-SLI Deluxe, an "nforce 4 sli" board probably shares the same PCB design with more solder pads populated (please confirm), and is also out of stock mostly.
The ASUS A8NE-FM/S has initial support in the form of a patch.
Hot plugging a BIOS chip was successfully done (pull out chip with glued-on handle while running Linux), so you don't necessarily need an external EPROM programmer, just a spare working 49LF004 chip. 8 MBit SST 49LF080A was also successfully flashed and booted with legacy BIOS (two images concatenated). The PLCC32 BIOS chip is of type SST 49LF004B of which you need a spare programmed piece. You might reflash an empty or used one plugged into your A8N.
Enable Serial Console for debugging. It will come up at 115200,8n1 option SERIAL_CONSOLE The revisions 3000 and up work, but don't expect anything to see on the POST card. The serial Terminal will show whether LB manages with your RAM.
run targets/buildtarget then run make in the A8N-E directory. you get a 512KB image. abuild may come up with a 508KB image, which is not working.
in bash you may type
svn co svn://coreboot.org/buildrom
then type "make menuconfig" but the A8NE is not supported there yet.
Known issues
- this tutorial is not as complete as the one for Gigabyte M57-SLI, so please look there for info on building the image.
- Currently PS/2 keyboards do not work, but USB keyboards do. --> this was fixed with Rev.3610
- Single DIMM support only : the blue DIMM_B1 socket should be populated only.
- The MAC address is stored in flash for almost all CK804/MCP55 boards. All of these boards flashed with LB probably have the same MAC address. See src/southbridge/nvidia/ck804/romstrap.inc and src/southbridge/nvidia/mcp55/romstrap.inc for details. On some of these boards, the MAC address is stored in a separate EEPROM, but you can't count on that.
TODO
If you can help out with this, please join the mailing list and let us know!
This work is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or any later version. This work is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details. |