PCENGINES APU[1-5] Coreboot SeaBIOS Open Firmware

[miroco]

Looking at these test results, the mainline v4.8.0.5 seems more promising, even without the ECC capability, then the legacy v4.0.20, but YMMW.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1_uRhVo9eYeZONnelymonYp444zYHT_Q_qmJEJ8_XqJc/edit#gid=0

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1_uRhVo9eYeZONnelymonYp444zYHT_Q_qmJEJ8_XqJc/edit#gid=1817105926

[Ricardo]

Looking at these test results, the mainline v4.8.0.5 seems more promising, even without the ECC capability, then the legacy v4.0.20, but YMMW.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1_uRhVo9eYeZONnelymonYp444zYHT_Q_qmJEJ8_XqJc/edit#gid=0

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1_uRhVo9eYeZONnelymonYp444zYHT_Q_qmJEJ8_XqJc/edit#gid=1817105926

Have you checked the list of known issues between the latest 4.8.x and 4.0.x release? Also, some known issues are revealed on that page only after it has been fixed, not when it is being discovered. So you would assume everything is fine and dandy when you see the current release has only 1-2 issues listed. When in reality, there are many discovered issues, just that they dont get revealed, until they get fixed. Which means, you naively think "oh it will be fine to use this as I am not affected by this 1-2 already revealed bugs". But behind the scenes, most probably you will be affected by the already-discovered but non-disclosed and not-yet-fixed ones.

This for example is only a partial list of what is going on behind the scenes:
https://github.com/pcengines/coreboot/issues

Just to get an idea, this ECC topic is the perfect example. Nowhere it is mentioned, that "hey customers, ECC is broken since our product hit the market". And all of a sudden, 4.8.0.5 finally admits: "well guys, we knew it was broken for 2+ yrs, but now we BELIEVE its working".
Have you seen ECC reported as broken in any of the previous releases "known issues" section? You see, thats the problem with this approach: perfectly supports the product vendor dishonesty, and allows them to reveal (or not!) their product defects on their convenience.

Or here is another topic: nobody in the world knows for sure, what is the real clockrate of the AMD CPU built into the APU2 boards!
https://forum.netgate.com/topic/133656/did-i-just-overclocked-my-apu2c4-amd-gx-412tc-soc

Everybody just guessing, not a single person can confidently say, this CPU is clocked to XYZ Ghz, and can/cannot do Turbo clock, where its Turbo clockrate is XYZ+ABC Ghz, and the reason why in the APU2 we dont see this clockrate ever is: ? (a big questionmark, nobody external or internal knows it)

[tillsense]

Hi all,

for interested 4.8.0.6 is available.

cheers
till

[loredo]

Still wouldn't recommend to install the new 4.8.x versions.
Just recently downgraded to 4.0.x because of reboot issues still existing.

[Ricardo]

Hi all,

for interested 4.8.0.6 is available.

cheers
till

4.8.0.6 has many stability issues:
https://pcengines.github.io/#mr-16

Known issues:
CPU frequency is stuck at low frequencies and does not react to stressin"
some PCIe cards are not detected on certain OSes
booting with 2 USB 3.x sticks plugged in apu4 sometimes results in detecting only 1 stick
certain USB 3.x sticks happen to not appear in boot menu
booting Xen is unstable
platforms happen to hang after reboot

[Evil_Sense]

Hi all,

for interested 4.8.0.6 is available.

cheers
till

4.8.0.6 has many stability issues:
https://pcengines.github.io/#mr-16

Known issues:
CPU frequency is stuck at low frequencies and does not react to stressin"
some PCIe cards are not detected on certain OSes
booting with 2 USB 3.x sticks plugged in apu4 sometimes results in detecting only 1 stick
certain USB 3.x sticks happen to not appear in boot menu
booting Xen is unstable
platforms happen to hang after reboot

Not only in 4.8.0.6.
At least the whole 4.8.x releases have these bugs, they just weren't added to the previous releases after they were found.

[Ricardo]

"Not only in 4.8.0.6.
At least the whole 4.8.x releases have these bugs, they just weren't added to the previous releases after they were found."

Exactly.
There may be other open issues in 4.8 that are already known, but not yet published. So I dont recommend 4.8.x, personally I stick to 4.0 as long as necessary. Dont want to risk my firewall crash because of these BIOS issues, it is rock solid (at least the BIOS) on 4.0.19.

[Evil_Sense]

"Not only in 4.8.0.6.
At least the whole 4.8.x releases have these bugs, they just weren't added to the previous releases after they were found."

Exactly.
There may be other open issues in 4.8 that are already known, but not yet published. So I dont recommend 4.8.x, personally I stick to 4.0 as long as necessary. Dont want to risk my firewall crash because of these BIOS issues, it is rock solid (at least the BIOS) on 4.0.19.

Well I'm running 4.8.0.6 and it's also stable, the most boring issue is that I need to replug power when rebooting after some hours/days running, not shure about the cpu frequency but working ecc and ahci is nice to have.

[tillsense]

Hi all,

for interested 4.8.0.7 is available.

cheers
till

[Northguy]

From the changelog it doesn't look if something useful is fixed with this release.

[miroco]

There seems to have been a substantial breakthrough in the development of the PC Engines firmware, the apu1 trough apu5 range. The latest test builds have a 05_ prefix and can be found here: https://cloud.3mdeb.com/index.php/s/ssRQPSjYG8Ek6mD

The upcoming official release is expected around January 10th. as v4.8.0.8

https://github.com/pcengines/apu2-documentation/issues/64

https://pcengines.github.io


miroco

[miroco]

Jan. 12th saw the most recent release of the APUx firmware range, including a new channel for announcing future releases.

v4.9.0.1 - Mainline
v4.0.23 - Legacy

http://www.pcengines.info/forums/?page=post&id=4C472C95-E846-42BF-BC41-43D1C54DFBEA&fid=6D8DBBA4-9D40-4C87-B471-80CB5D9BD945&pageindex=3


miroco

[loredo]

awww, people report the reboot issue to be finally fixed for the mainline version.
Sounds promising, might be worth giving it a try. but maybe not mixing it up together with 19.1 migration - just to make sure there is nothing interfering, you never know...

[mayo]

Updated bios to v4.9.0.1 - Mainline with 19.1.1 without problems.

[loredo]

Same