Adding Opteron 2300-series "Barcelona" support to Sun Ultra 40 M2 Socket F bios

[layla]

We would need to collect more Ultra 40 M2 enthusiasts/experts and bring them all here,
more we are, more we can proceed with this and share our knowledge and experience about it
Unfortunately for these kind of things my knowledge is a bit limited

[jbrandt01]

I recently picked up one of these systems and I would be glad to help out where I can.

[layla]

welcome jbrandt01, congrats for the pick up!

[eunix]

Hello everyone.

I have an interest in this topic also and would like to lend a hand where I can.
I have both a Ultra 20 M2 and 40 M2.

Eunix

[eunix]

I know that many people were pissed at SUN for dropping the support of future processors with the Ultra 20 and Ultra 40 machines. They are great machines, I still use both of mine today but it was my plan to move to quad core as both SUN and AMD touted in they many tech sessions. That was the promise.

The machines are work horses and now that Oracle is the owner, there will be no more hope. But what pisses me off is that you cannot easily get your hands on the old stuff. Initially trying to find the OEM MB manufacturer was a pain and even after that, to go to the Tyan site, you will not get a straight forward answer.

My question is this....How much difficulty would it be to just create a new replacement BIOS and put it in the Open Market? I know that the market would be limited but I think it may be bigger than most people think.

To put 2 x 6 Core processors in my machine would be awesome. I could deal with the physical memory constraints but 12 core x 32 G Ram is not bad.

[frank564]

Thanks for your continued input TheWiz. You've been very helpful.

I went out and bought a PLCC remover. I'm going to source a chip and a writer, so any real testing will have to wait a couple weeks.

In the mean time, I need to familize myself with the BIOS modules and how offsets are calculated. The subroutines/offsets will change with the new file, JMPs will need to be updated accordingly. I need to figure out how to calculate the offsets (will file offsets be good enough or do I need to calculate offsets in memory??) It's been a while since I've used IDA but I'm going to give this a shot.

Hi

I was wondering if you ever got this to work? I have a Sun Ultra 40 Workstation with Dual Core and just bought Quad Core Socket F's both AMD.

any help would be greatly appreciated.

[frank564]

Brand AMD
Processor Model Opteron 2389
MPN OS2389WHP4DGI
UPC 730143262330
Key Features
Clock Speed 2.9 GHz
CPU Socket Type Socket Fr5 (1207)
Multi-Core Technology Quad-Core
TDP 75 W
Processor Quantity 1
Product Type Processor
Cache Memory
Level 1 Size 128 KB
Installed Size L2 - 4 x 512 KB - L3 6 MB

I have two of these, Id like to install on my SUN ultra 40 that currently has two dual core processors. any help??? greatky appreciated

[layla]

Brand AMD
Processor Model Opteron 2389

I have two of these, Id like to install on my SUN ultra 40 that currently has two dual core processors. any help??? greatky appreciated

Hello Frank,
unfortunately you can't... the project failed, it is over kaput

[SynbiosVyse]

Looks like I'm late to the game. Has anyone ever gotten quad or six core CPUs to work on the Ultra 40 M2?

Am I correct in saying that a BIOS mod is necessary in order for the machine to recognize the CPU? It is an absolute shame that we are not able to put dual hexa-core in this beast.

Am I stuck with two dual-core??

[madscientist159]

Looks like I'm late to the game. Has anyone ever gotten quad or six core CPUs to work on the Ultra 40 M2?

Am I correct in saying that a BIOS mod is necessary in order for the machine to recognize the CPU? It is an absolute shame that we are not able to put dual hexa-core in this beast.

Am I stuck with two dual-core??

It looks like coreboot (an open source boot firmware) recently gained support for this workstation:
http://www.coreboot.org/Board:sunw/ultra40m2

I believe the original author has a Family 10h port that he might release if asked.

Not sure if it will help, but I know the hex-core Family 10h devices are supported on coreboot, so it would depend mostly on hardware compatibility at this point.