Really happy I am to tell you : FreeDOS floppy is working perfectly as
a part of coreboot+SeaBIOS opensource BIOS image ! ( inside Lenovo
G505S quadcore AMD A10-5750M based laptop with 16GB RAM installed ) .
After you build coreboot, it's super easy to add a floppy of any
supported size (1.44MB/2.88MB/etc) with one simple command :
./coreboot/build/cbfstool ./coreboot/build/coreboot.rom add -f
./build/freedos.img -n floppyimg/freedos.lzma -t raw -c lzma
and then you will always see FreeDOS available as "Ramdisk" boot entry
inside your SeaBIOS boot menu.
Although this FreeDOS floppy is quite frugal and doesn't include a lot
of things which could've been tested , at least
1) there were no errors reported during its' booting ,
2) both internal and USB keyboards are working great ,
3) and even "beep" system sound is working ;) Very good!
Perhaps I could remove FDSETUP and put lots of cool/fun things there,
especially since it's possible to extend a floppy from 1.44MB to
2.88MB "double sized floppy" and currently FreeDOS occupies just 715
KB inside my 4MB BIOS SPI flash chip thanks to LZMA compression. While
I have more than 3MB out of 4MB free, because - unlike fat closed
source proprietary UEFI (which might contain backdoors also) -
coreboot together with SeaBIOS payload occupy less than 1MB :)
coreboot could be installed without any soldering, simply by using
CH341A USB SPI programmer (supported by opensource flashrom software)
+ SOIC8 test clip for attaching to the BIOS chip . Together they cost
about $10 with free shipping from China, and there's a pretty detailed
flashing manual at DangerousPrototypes wiki: just type "flashing BIOS
chip bus pirate" in your search engine and it should be a top result
("bus pirate" is another more expensive programmer but the ending part
of manual contains the instructions for CH341A + there are useful
links to various SOIC8 test clips and detailed pictures)
If you have any testing requests or simply questions regarding that
coreboot+SeaBIOS setup, I am always happy to help you :D
P.S. What is great about this particular coreboot-supported laptop, is
that Lenovo G505S doesn't contain any ME/PSP hardware backdoors inside
its' CPU , is quite powerful and could be bought used for just
~$100-$150, although to upgrade it to 16GB costs about $100 . Just
need to make sure there is A10-5750M CPU installed, because some G505S
versions had a weaker A8, and although it is possible to upgrade since
CPU isn't socketed, that could cost another $50 . Also there are 3
versions regarding the discrete GPU: only integrated HD 8650G (from
A10-5750M) , that integrated + discrete HD 8570M , that integrated +
discrete R5 M230 . R5 M230 is about 4% faster but more rare. Even if
you don't need a discrete GPU ( since its' performance is similar or
could be even below than integrated - because you could install fast
1600MHz CL9 while discrete will always have its' own slower 1333MHz
CL9 / 1600MHz CL11 ) - "with discrete" versions have two heatsinks
instead of one so your CPU is cooling better.
Best regards,
Ivan Ivanov,
open source firmware developer
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