On Tue, 01 Feb 2011 13:05:24 +0200, Juhana Helovuo <[email protected]> wrote: > 30.1.2011 13:16, Peter Stuge kirjoitti: > >> Personally I believe that development is what is missing to get >> corebot testing going to a greater extent. As you will see in the >> documentation there are fairly many requirements for an individual >> mainboard to actually be hooked up to the test system. It's fully >> automated once it runs, but it's too complicated to get there. >> >> I think this needs to be optimized and to some degree productized, >> into an easy to buy and fairly affordable (<100$) unit that can >> administer testing of one or even better several mainboards. I have >> plenty of design and implementation ideas if you'd like to go into >> that. > > Hello all, > > I started building a tester device to hook up a mainboard into an > automated test host. > > The basic plan is as follows: The host computer is connected to tester > device via USB. The tester is connected to the target mainboard so that > it can take control of the BIOS ROM and reprogram it regardless of the > state of the target mainbaord. > > The tester device can also connect to the serial port of the target > mainboard, so it can act as a serial-over-USB-device. This is because > otherwise controlling the test of N mainboards would require N serial > ports in the host. > > The tester also has two FET switches for controlling the reset and ATX > power buttons on the target mainboard. > > The actual AC power control of the target mainboard is not included and > should be done by another device, such as this: > http://www.gembird.nl/default.aspx?op=products&op2=item&id=3234 > > So far there is support only for SPI ROMs, but the design could be > modified to support LPC and FWH also. > > The tester device is basically an Atmel Atmega microcontroller, which > can talk USB, RS232, SPI, and generic digital I/O. > > Here are some images of my first (incomplete) prototype: > > http://alpskari.asiantuntijat.org/~juhe/spi-flasher-piirilevyt/ > > The images were originally taken just to illustrate the PCB making > experiment via the toner transfer method, but you can also see what the > device looks like. The smaller board is specific to SPI ROMs and > attaches to the SPI ROM socket on the mainbaord. The larger PCB is a > microcontroller, which connects all the parts together. > > Both the software and hardware are incomplete. Hardware is missing some > parts and work. > > The software is not yet done, except a prototype microcontroller program > that can read and program SPI ROMs. It is controlled by "flashrom" from > Linux host. It can communicate via serial port using the "serial > programmer" protocol. Flashrom program was modified by adding a > "serprog-spi"-module, which is modified from "serprog", mainly by > adapting it to suit SPI. > > > Best regards, > Juhana Helovuo
Wow! that is really cool! I hope it works out as planned :-) -- Thanks, Joseph Smith Set-Top-Linux www.settoplinux.org -- coreboot mailing list: [email protected] http://www.coreboot.org/mailman/listinfo/coreboot
