Hello coreboot community!

I would like to formally announce a new project I've been working on for
the last few weeks.

Retroboot is based on coreboot, and today I have made an official
release. This release is available from the https://retroboot.org/ with
ROM images and source code provided. Please read the Retroboot
documentation if you wish to learn how to use them. Support is provided
at theĀ #retroboot IRC channel on Freenode.

Retroboot is a new coreboot distribution, forked from the Libreboot
20160907 build system, but allows binary blobs from coreboot and uses an
up to date version of coreboot. The purpose of Retroboot is to provide
pre-compiled ROM images for any system that coreboot supports.
Retroboot, based on coreboot, provides hardware initialization on
supported x86 computers; it sets up the hardware and boots an operating
system such as GNU+Linux, BSD and Windows.

Retroboot provides an automated build system that compiled coreboot,
GRUB, SeaBIOS and various other required software, with specific
configurations. It provides a completely automated way to build and test
ROM images of coreboot, in various configurations. Each board added to
Retroboot can specify a coreboot version at a specific commit ID from
the coreboot Git repository, and custom patches. It can then be used
with any number of coreboot payloads such as GRUB, SeaBIOS and (planned
for a future release) Tianocore and linuxboot. Read the documentation on
the Retroboot website for more information about each system supported
in the Retroboot build system.

The aim of Retroboot is to make coreboot easy to use. Coreboot is
notoriously difficult to build, and very much not user friendly.
Retroboot provides user focused documentation and professional support
based on years of experience dealing with coreboot. I, Leah Rowe, am the
founder of the Retroboot project and I am also the founder of the
Libreboot project.

This release, marked beta, released on 28 December 2020, supports the
following machines:

  * ThinkPad X220 (untested at the time of release)
  * ThinkPad X230 (tested on a few machines at the time of release)
  * ThinkPad X230 Tablet (untested at the time of release, but X230 is
    the same board as the X230T, with minor differences, so the X230T
    ROMs should work)
  * ThinkPad T60 with ATI Mobility Radeon X1400, PCI ID 1002:7145
    (tested on one machine at the time of release)

NOTE: /tested/ in this context means that the machine can be observed
booting a Linux kernel. Also, Windows 10 was confirmed to boot on the
X230 with Intel VGA ROM and SeaBIOS payload. (we recommend the use of
free operating systems like GNU+Linux).

For documentation, refer to the accompnying source code release archive.
Documentation is included in that archive. You can also refer to the
documentation hosted directly at https://retroboot.org/ and this is more
recommended due to it being more up to date.

This is a public /beta/ release. The ROM images provided in this release
are NOT guaranteed to boot correctly on your machine. If you install
this, you should make sure that you have SPI flashing equipment (for
flashing 25XX NOR flash) and, ideally, debugging equipment such as EHCI
debug dongle.

Extensive testing is required for all of the ROMs in this release, so
user testing is highly encouraged! The plan for Retroboot is to have
long, long periods of /testing/ releases, before versions are marked
stable (similar to how the Debian project operates).


More information about Retroboot can be found on the Retroboot website:

https://retroboot.org/

Extensive documentation is provided, including for developers.

I'm currently looking for people to add and maintain boards in
Retroboot. The entire build system is documented here:

https://retroboot.org/docs/maintain/

-- 
Leah Rowe,

And now, a song:

https://blog.vimuser.org/free-firmware-song.html

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