PCENGINES APU[1-7] Coreboot SeaBIOS Open Source Firmware

[Patrick M. Hausen]

I hope you are just trolling here, and not serious. Have you seen the coreboot open issues on APU? For example if some ACPI entries are wrong in the BIOS, no OS-level sorcery will make it work. And thats just 1 type of problem, why the BIOS must be error free.

Definitely not trolling. I'm more used to the world of commercial BIOSes and e.g. for my Supermicro boards there is an inital BIOS version, then maybe 2 or 3 updates, an then ... nothing. The systems continue to run, some boards are sold for a decade or so - still no more BIOS updates.

I really had the impression that a BIOS is a piece of software that is finished at some point - the hardware doesn't change, right? New platform, entirely new challenge, of course.

That's why I started my first post with "what am I missing"?

[tillsense]

Hi all,

i see movement... https://github.com/pcengines/coreboot  :D

cheers
till

[newsense]

Already installed on APU3 and APU4 - working fine:

Code Select Expand

# dmidecode 3.4
Scanning /dev/mem for entry point.
SMBIOS 3.0.0 present.

Handle 0x0000, DMI type 0, 26 bytes
BIOS Information
        Vendor: coreboot
        Version: v4.19.0.1
        Release Date: 01/27/2023
        ROM Size: 8 MB
        Characteristics:
                PCI is supported
                PC Card (PCMCIA) is supported
                BIOS is upgradeable
                Selectable boot is supported
                ACPI is supported
                Targeted content distribution is supported
        BIOS Revision: 0.0
        Firmware Revision: 0.0


[pietrushnic]

Dear OPNsense community members,
We regret to announce that PC Engines, a provider of small and low-power servers for network security, wireless networking, and embedded applications, has discontinued its sponsorship for open-source firmware. Although this is a significant change for the open-source firmware community, our commitment to supporting the hardware remains strong. At Dasharo, we aim to continue the legacy of PC Engines by distributing open-source firmware and putting the community's needs first. Our focus will be on releases and feature sets driven by community support. We are considering a subscription model to ensure stable and reliable firmware updates. Your input is important to us, and we would appreciate your feedback through our survey. Please help us understand how we can better serve the open-source firmware community and ensure its success in the future.

Full details: https://docs.dasharo.com/variants/pc_engines/post-eol-fw-announcement

[tillsense]

Hello Piotr,

took your announcement to the thread start page. That was really hard for me.. we or your team never met but keep up the good work!

cheers
till

[pietrushnic]

@tillsense, thank you.

[pietrushnic]

Hello everyone,
We want to express our deepest gratitude to all respondents who took the time to complete our survey. Your valuable feedback has contributed significantly to understanding the community's needs and preferences. We have closed the survey and are excited to share a summary and some results with you.

We cordially invite you to attend the Dasharo User Group meeting, where we will present the survey findings. Your participation in the mini-conference will provide insights into the community's opinions and help shape the future of our firmware solutions.

For more information about the event and to register (not required), please visit: https://vpub.dasharo.com/e/1/dasharo-user-group-1

Once again, thank you for your contribution, and we look forward to seeing you at the Dasharo User Group #1 meeting!

Best regards,
Piotr Król

[tillsense]

Official PC Engines APU platform EndOfLife: https://www.pcengines.ch/eol.htm

[Patrick M. Hausen]

What's keeping them from doing an Atom based design? Then there's the embedded AMD Epyc.

Sorry, limited ressources, no financial perspective, ... whatever. But blaming platform availability looks a bit lame to me.

[iam]

I totally agree. Unfortunately there is no chassis compatible alternative on the market I assume?

[Seimus]

This is a bit(lot) disappointing. I've been using APU for quite some time, and personally, I hoped they would refresh or redo their platform with newer CPUs from AMD.

[pietrushnic]

Hi all,
I have some news for you. After struggling with the initial campaign to revive PC Engines firmware builds, we finally gathered funds and created a sustainable business model for our famous hardware. We recently released the first version of Dasharo for PC Engines with UEFI support. Feel free to check it out

Please let us know what you think about it.

P.S. In the background, we are working on continuing the old version of the code, which we call Dasharo (coreboot+SeaBIOS). We plan to support both the mainline and legacy versions. Information about that endeavor can be found here

[Patrick M. Hausen]

That's awesome. I still have a couple of APU appliances. Similar to Soekris devices the hardware is just so well designed, these things don't die. Soekris are unfortunately barely usable with a 32 bit Geode CPU and e.g. 256 MB of memory. But an APU can still easily route 1 Gbit/s as long as PPPoE isn't involved.

So thanks!

[devilkin]

Awesome news! Thank you!

How usable is the UEFI build at this point?

[pietrushnic]

How usable is the UEFI build at this point?

You can decide for yourself by looking at test results here and reading issue reports here. Feel free to let us know how to make our offering better. We are still working on Dasharo (coreboot+SeaBIOS) based on coreboot 24.02.01 and how to publish it this quarter.