Gigabyte GA-G41M-ES2L desktop board

*Specifications*
Manufacturer	Gigabyte
Name	GA-G41M-ES2L
Released	2009
Chipset	Intel G41
CPU	Intel Core 2 Extreme/Quad/Duo,
Pentium Extreme/D/4 Extreme/4/Celeron
Graphics	Integrated
Display	None.
Memory	Up to 16GB
Architecture	x86_64
Original boot firmware	AWARD BIOS
Intel ME/AMD PSP	Present. Can be disabled
Flash chip	2x8Mbit

W+: Works; 
N: Doesn't work; 
U: Untested; 
P+: Partially works;

*Features*
Internal flashing with original boot firmware	W+
Display	-
Audio	W+
RAM Init	P+
External output	P+
Display brightness	-

*Payloads supported*
GRUB	Slow!
SeaBIOS	Works
SeaBIOS with GRUB	Works

This is a desktop board using intel hardware (circa ~2009, ICH7 southbridge, similar performance-wise to the ThinkPad X200. It can make for quite a nifty desktop. Powered by Canoeboot.

In recent Canoeboot releases, only SeaBIOS payload is provided in ROMs for this board. According to user reports, they work quite well. GRUB was always buggy on this board, so it was removed from cbmk.

IDE on the board is untested, but it might be possible to use a SATA HDD using an IDE SATA adapter. The SATA ports do work, but it’s IDE emulation. The emulation is slow in DMA mode sia SeaBIOS, so SeaBIOS is configured to use PIO mode on this board. This SeaBIOS configuration does not affect the GNU+Linux kernel.

You need to set a custom MAC address in GNU+Linux for the NIC to work. In /etc/network/interfaces on debian-based systems like Debian or Devuan, this would be in the entry for your NIC:
hwaddress ether macaddressgoeshere

Alternatively:

cbfstool canoeboot.rom extract -n rt8168-macaddress -f rt8168-macaddress

Modify the MAC address in the file rt8168-macaddress and then:

cbfstool canoeboot.rom remove -n rt8168-macaddress
cbfstool canoeboot.rom add -f rt8168-macaddress -n rt8168-macaddress -t raw

Now you have a different MAC address hardcoded. In the above example, the ROM image is named canoeboot.rom for your board. You can find cbfstool under coreboot/default/util/cbfstool/ after running the following command in the build system:

./build module cbutils

You can learn more about using the build system, cbmk, here:
Canoeboot build instructions

Flashing instructions can be found at ../install/

RAM

This board is very picky with RAM. If it doesn’t boot, try an EHCI debug dongle, serial usb adapter and null modem cable, or spkmodem, to get a coreboot log to see if it passed raminit.

Kingston 8 GiB Kit KVR800D2N6/8G with Elpida Chips E2108ABSE-8G-E

this is a 2x4GB setup and these work quite well, according to a user on IRC.

Nanya NT2GT64U8HD0BY-AD with 2 GiB of NT5TU128M8DE-AD chips works too.

Many other modules will probably work just fine, but raminit is very picky on this board. Your mileage will fluctuate, wildly.

Markdown file for this page: https://canoeboot.org/docs/hardware/ga-g41m-es2l.md

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