Uwe Hermann | A slightly paranoid Debian developer

I have mentioned the flashrom utility in my blog in the past. This is a small command line tool which allows you to update your BIOS/coreboot/firmware chips without opening the computer and without any special boot procedures.

Yesterday, flashrom 0.9 was finally released. Here's a short passage from the release announcement:

After nine years of development and constant improvement, we have added support for every BIOS flash ROM technology present on x86 mainboards and every flash ROM chip we ever saw in the wild.

Highlights of flashrom include:

• Parallel, LPC, FWH and SPI flash interfaces.
• 157 flash chip families and half a dozen variants of each family.
• Flash chip package agnostic. DIP32, PLCC32, DIP8, SO8/SOIC8, TSOP32, TSOP40 and more have all been verified to work.
• 75 different chipsets, some with multiple flash controllers.
• Special mainboard enabling code for dozens of nonstandard mainboards.
• No physical access needed. root access is sufficient.
• No bootable floppy disk, bootable CD-ROM or other media needed.
• No keyboard or monitor needed. Simply reflash remotely via SSH.
• No instant reboot needed. Reflash your ROM in a running system, verify it, be happy. The new firmware will be present next time you boot.
• Crossflashing and hotflashing is possible as long as the flash chips are electrically and logically compatible (same protocol). Great for recovery.
• Scriptability. Reflash a whole pool of identical machines at the same time from the command line. It is recommended to check flashrom output and error codes.
• Speed. flashrom is much faster than vendor flash tools.
• Supports Linux, FreeBSD, DragonFly BSD, Solaris, Mac OS X. Please refer to the README for build instructions.

Please note that rewriting your flash chip can be dangerous and flashrom developers make no guarantees whatsoever. That said, many users have successfully replaced proprietary tools such as awdflash, amiflash and afudos with flashrom.

Download: flashrom-0.9.0.tar.gz
SVN: svn co svn://coreboot.org/flashrom/trunk flashrom
Debian: apt-get install flashrom

Do yourself a favor and try flashrom next time you want to upgrade your BIOS. No more floppies or bootable CD-ROMs with DOS/Windows binaries or similar crap. Run flashrom conveniently from the Linux command line, or even via SSH or serial console if you want...

linlap.com

I recently got a new (well, refurbished) laptop as a replacement for my old Toshiba A80-117 laptop which has more or less died. It's an IBM/Lenovo T40p laptop (model 2373-CG6), with an Intel Pentim M at 1.5 GHz. I chose this laptop for multiple reasons:

• Robustness (which is supposedly one of the main advantages of Thinkpads).
• Relatively cheap, as it's an older refurbished model (I paid less than 280 Euros).
• Resolution of 1400x1050 (the usual 1024x768 of similar models is definately not enough for my purposes).
• It can use up to 2 GB of DDR RAM (many similar models have a chipset-limitation of 1 GB). I swiftly replaced the shipped 512 MB of RAM with the 2 GB from my old laptop. The hardware maintainance manual has very useful instructions on opening the laptop, btw.
• Gigabit Ethernet.
• Non-glossy screen (very important!).
• Pretty long battery life (even though it's refurbished), I get more that 2 hours or so.

Downsides and missing hardware features (nothing too important, though):

• No HDAPS unfortunately, which would have been fancy.
• No support for burning DVDs, only CDs (but that's possible through an upgrade, I think).
• Only two USB ports, more of them would have been nice.
• No Firewire, but that's not really critical for me.

Pretty much all of the hardware works flawlessly out of the box with a recent distro/kernel, see below for details.

Installation

Not needed, I simply popped out the 40 GB drive from the T40p and inserted my 160 GB (PATA) drive from my old laptop and that was it. Pretty much everything worked out of the box (see below), even though this is a totally different manufacturer, model, chipset, graphics card, wireless card, and so on. The only exception being (of course) my small Windows partition on that disk, which is now unusable as the drive is on different hardware and Microsoft doesn't like me to do that. Free Software: 1, Microsoft: 0.

Audio

Works out of the box using the snd_intel8x0 driver. The hardware is onboard audio in the southbridge (82801DB / ICH4) and uses the Analog Devices AD1981B codec.

Bluetooth

Works out of the box using the bluetooth and hci_usb driver. The laptop's Bluetooth device is USB-attached internally and shows up in lsusb as:

  $ lsusb
  Bus 003 Device 004: ID 1668:0441 Actiontec Electronics, Inc. [hex] IBM Integrated Bluetooth II

The device is not enabled per default though (which is a good thing), you can enable it like this:

  $ echo enable > /proc/acpi/ibm/bluetooth

Disabling is equally simple:

  $ echo disable > /proc/acpi/ibm/bluetooth

After that, you can use hcitool / hciconfig etc. as usual, and/or enable more related stuff with /etc/init.d/bluetooth restart.

Modem

Untested, I don't need it.

IrDA

Untested so far.

Sensors

Works out of the box.

  $ sensors
  acpitz-virtual-0
  Adapter: Virtual device
  temp1:       +51.0°C  (crit = +93.0°C)                  

  thinkpad-isa-0000
  Adapter: ISA adapter
  fan1:       3698 RPM
  temp1:       +51.0°C                                    
  temp2:       +42.0°C                                    
  temp3:       +32.0°C                                    
  temp4:       +49.0°C                                    
  temp5:       +33.0°C                                    
  ERROR: Can't get value of subfeature temp6_input: Can't read
  temp6:        +0.0°C                                    
  temp7:       +28.0°C                                    
  ERROR: Can't get value of subfeature temp8_input: Can't read
  temp8:        +0.0°C                                    

HPET

The Intel ICH4-M southbridge in this laptop supports High Performance Event Timers (HPET) which allows for more power savings and thus improved battery life.

  $ dmesg | grep -i hpet
  pci 0000:00:1f.0: Force enabled HPET at 0xfed00000
  hpet clockevent registered
  HPET: 3 timers in total, 0 timers will be used for per-cpu timer
  hpet0: at MMIO 0xfed00000, IRQs 2, 8, 0
  hpet0: 3 comparators, 64-bit 14.318180 MHz counter

You can check with powertop that the number of wakeups-from-idle is drastically reduced (from 70 to less than 10) when adding hpet=force to the kernel command line.

Network card

Works out of the box using the e1000 driver.

  $ modprobe e1000
  Intel(R) PRO/1000 Network Driver - version 7.3.20-k2-NAPI
  Copyright (c) 1999-2006 Intel Corporation.
  ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:02:01.0[A] -> Link [LNKA] -> GSI 11 (level, low) -> IRQ 11
  e1000: 0000:02:01.0: e1000_probe: (PCI:33MHz:32-bit) 00:11:22:33:44:55
  e1000: eth0: e1000_probe: Intel(R) PRO/1000 Network Connection

Touchpad

Works out of the box, both in X as well as in the console using gpm.

TrackPoint

Works out of the box, both in X as well as in the console using gpm.

Suspend-to-disk and suspend-to-RAM

Both work out of the box (on 2.6.26 or 2.6.29 kernels), or at least it used to; I think I'm seeing some hangs upon resume nowadays (Capslock LED is blinking, schreen is blank. I'll investigate.). I'm using the hibernate Debian package. You can explicitly force the usage of either method in /etc/hibernate/hibernate.conf by uncommenting the respective lines.

# TryMethod suspend2.conf
TryMethod disk.conf
# TryMethod ram.conf

Wireless

Works out of the box using the ath5k driver. I tested WEP as well as WPA.

CPU frequency scaling

Works out of the box using the acpi_cpufreq driver.

$ cpufreq-info
analyzing CPU 0:
  driver: acpi-cpufreq
  CPUs which need to switch frequency at the same time: 0
  hardware limits: 600 MHz - 1.50 GHz
  available frequency steps: 1.50 GHz, 1.40 GHz, 1.20 GHz, 1000 MHz, 800 MHz, 600 MHz
  available cpufreq governors: userspace, powersave, ondemand, conservative, performance
  current policy: frequency should be within 800 MHz and 1.50 GHz.
                  The governor "powersave" may decide which speed to use
                  within this range.
  current CPU frequency is 800 MHz (asserted by call to hardware).
  cpufreq stats: 1.50 GHz:69.76%, 1.40 GHz:0.11%, 1.20 GHz:0.13%, 1000 MHz:0.16%, 800 MHz:29.83%, 600 MHz:0.00%  (4010)

Use cpufreq-set -g performance if you need full CPU power, cpufreq-set -g powersave otherwise.

PC Speaker

Works fine out of the box, tested with beep.

CDRW/DVD

Works out of the box. You can play DVDs or CD-ROMs, and burn CDs (but not DVDs):

  $ wodim foo.iso
  [...]
  Device type    : Removable CD-ROM
  Version        : 0
  Response Format: 2
  Capabilities   :
  Vendor_info    : 'MATSHITA'
  Identification : 'UJDA745 DVD/CDRW'
  Revision       : '1.02'
  Device seems to be: Generic mmc2 DVD-ROM.
  Using generic SCSI-3/mmc   CD-R/CD-RW driver (mmc_cdr).
  Driver flags   : MMC-3 SWABAUDIO BURNFREE
  Supported modes: TAO PACKET SAO SAO/R96P SAO/R96R RAW/R96R

Ejecting a CD-ROM/DVD using the eject command line tool also works fine.

Graphics card

Works out of the box using the radeon driver.

  $ xrandr
  Screen 0: minimum 320 x 200, current 1400 x 1050, maximum 1400 x 2048
  VGA-0 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
  DVI-0 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
  LVDS connected 1400x1050+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 0mm x 0mm
     1400x1050      50.0*+
     1280x800       60.0  
     1280x768       60.0  
     1024x768       60.0  
     800x600        60.3  
     640x480        59.9  
  S-video disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)

DRI works out of the box with the (mainline, open-source) driver:

  $ glxinfo | grep direct
  direct rendering: Yes

If you attach an external monitor or projector, you can enable it using xrandr as usual:

  $ xrandr --output VGA-0 --auto

You can also use a dual-head setup by adding this to your "Screen" section in /etc/X11/xorg.conf:

  SubSection "Display"
    # Virtual 2048 2048
    Virtual 1400 2048
  EndSubSection

After restarting the X server, you can play with xrandr and move the external screen (VGA-0) "below" the laptop's LCD screen (LVDS) for a simple dual-head setup. The GUI tools arandr or grandr are probably a bit simpler to use than plain command line xrandr.

The maximum size for the "Virtual" line is 2048x2048 if you want to keep DRI enabled (you can use higher values if you don't care about DRI).

S-Video

Untested so far.

Parallel port

Yes, this model still has an actual parallel port, which is nice as I can use it for random JTAG stuff (e.g. OpenOCD) with several cheapo parallel port JTAG adapters I own.

PCMCIA

This laptop has a type II/III PCMCIA slot which works out of the box using the pcmcia and yenta_socket drivers. You can probe/handle PCMCIA cards using the pccardctl tool:

  $ pccardctl status
  Socket 0:
    no card
  Socket 1:
    no card

USB

Works fine, of course. Luckily it's USB 2.0 (not USB 1.1) so I can successfully do high-speed stuff, e.g. watching DVB-T using kaffeine. The only small problem is that there are only two USB ports, more would have been better.

Disk drive

Works fine, of course, it's just a normal PATA drive. You can check if DMA gets properly enabled with hdparm /dev/hda | grep dma.

ThinkLight

Works out of the box (Fn + PgUp). This is a tiny, but useful light embedded in the screen, which is helpful if you're working in dark rooms or in trains during the night etc.

Special keys

What works out of the box: brightness control buttons, audio volume control + mute buttons, thinklight button.

TODO: Access IBM, F3, F4, F5, F7, F12, left/right special keys, Fn+Space.

LEDs

All of them seem to work fine, including the Bluetooth on/off and Wireless on/off LEDs, as well as the suspend LED.

Detailed system information

lspci -tvnn

-[0000:00]-+-00.0  Intel Corporation 82855PM Processor to I/O Controller [8086:3340]
           +-01.0-[0000:01]----00.0  ATI Technologies Inc Radeon RV250 [Mobility FireGL 9000] [1002:4c66]
           +-1d.0  Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) USB UHCI Controller #1 [8086:24c2]
           +-1d.1  Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) USB UHCI Controller #2 [8086:24c4]
           +-1d.2  Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) USB UHCI Controller #3 [8086:24c7]
           +-1d.7  Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-M) USB2 EHCI Controller [8086:24cd]
           +-1e.0-[0000:02-08]--+-00.0  Texas Instruments PCI1520 PC card Cardbus Controller [104c:ac55]
           |                    +-00.1  Texas Instruments PCI1520 PC card Cardbus Controller [104c:ac55]
           |                    +-01.0  Intel Corporation 82540EP Gigabit Ethernet Controller (Mobile) [8086:101e]
           |                    \-02.0  Atheros Communications Inc. AR5212 802.11abg NIC [168c:1014]
           +-1f.0  Intel Corporation 82801DBM (ICH4-M) LPC Interface Bridge [8086:24cc]
           +-1f.1  Intel Corporation 82801DBM (ICH4-M) IDE Controller [8086:24ca]
           +-1f.3  Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) SMBus Controller [8086:24c3]
           +-1f.5  Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) AC'97 Audio Controller [8086:24c5]
           \-1f.6  Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) AC'97 Modem Controller [8086:24c6]

cat /proc/cpuinfo

processor       : 0
vendor_id       : GenuineIntel
cpu family      : 6
model           : 9
model name      : Intel(R) Pentium(R) M processor 1500MHz
stepping        : 5
cpu MHz         : 1500.000
cache size      : 1024 KB
fdiv_bug        : no
hlt_bug         : no
f00f_bug        : no
coma_bug        : no
fpu             : yes
fpu_exception   : yes
cpuid level     : 2
wp              : yes
flags           : fpu vme de pse tsc msr mce cx8 sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 tm pbe up bts est tm2
bogomips        : 2997.72
clflush size    : 64
power management:

All in all it's a really nice piece of hardware, and it works without much hassle with recent distros/kernels.

If you recently upgraded your kernel to the 2.6.29 Debian package, you might have noticed some (e.g. graphics) drivers stopped working or are working slower. In my case, this was the radeon driver, which inexplicably seemed to cause lots of slowdowns in some applications and games. A quick look into dmesg revealed the reason:

  [drm] Initialized radeon 1.29.0 20080528 on minor 0
  agpgart-intel 0000:00:00.0: AGP 2.0 bridge
  agpgart-intel 0000:00:00.0: putting AGP V2 device into 4x mode
  pci 0000:01:00.0: putting AGP V2 device into 4x mode
  [drm] Setting GART location based on new memory map
  [drm] Loading R200 Microcode
  platform radeon_cp.0: firmware: requesting radeon/R200_cp.bin
  radeon_cp: Failed to load firmware "radeon/R200_cp.bin"
  [drm:radeon_do_init_cp] *ERROR* Failed to load firmware!

As noted in the changelog file, the radeon firmware R200_cp.bin has been removed from the kernel, and is now available in the separate firmware-linux Debian package. So the simple fix for this issues is:

  $ apt-get install firmware-linux
  $ dpkg -L firmware-linux | grep R200_cp.bin
  /lib/firmware/radeon/R200_cp.bin

After restarting X, the dmesg output looks more sane again:

  agpgart-intel 0000:00:00.0: AGP 2.0 bridge
  agpgart-intel 0000:00:00.0: putting AGP V2 device into 4x mode
  pci 0000:01:00.0: putting AGP V2 device into 4x mode
  [drm] Setting GART location based on new memory map
  [drm] Loading R200 Microcode
  platform radeon_cp.0: firmware: requesting radeon/R200_cp.bin
  [drm] writeback test succeeded in 2 usecs

Great track from the Story of Ohm album from paniq of demoscene fame. Enjoy!

Thanks to esden for the hint!

Song: paniq - Zum Projekt (3:12 min, 4.6 MB)
License: CC-by-sa 3.0
Source: jamendo.com
Purchase from: Jamendo

Very nice song/remix by spinmeister.

I also used this in my recent Coreboot hacking: How to solder a PLCC socket on your board video...

Song: spinmeister - Dream of Flight (Dreamy Twang Mix) (5:37 min, 7.8 MB)
License: CC-by-nc 3.0
Source: ccmixter.org
Purchase from: ?