PC ENGINES

Release notes

Release notes describing changes, fixes and known issues in PC Engines apux releases:

OS status

Some operating system have problems running with different storage medias. These table shows currently tested systems on BIOS v4.6.x with corresponding medias:

OS	SD card	SATA disk	mSATA disk	USB stick
Voyage	(1)	OK	OK	(2)
Debian	OK	OK	OK	(2)
pfSense	OK	OK(*)	not tested	(2)

^* - works well with BIOS v4.6.8 or later in mainline and all legacy releases; for v4.6.7 and older mainline versions issues with installation and system functionality (installation break, unwanted reboots), can be fixed by adding a hint hint.ahci.0.msi="0", for more information see this document

⁽²⁾ - all apu boards have problems with USB 3.x stick detection in BIOS, system is working properly, but after reboot/warmboot/coldboot USB stick may not appear in BIOS boot menu (depends on the stick, well working sticks are mentioned in this document)

⁽¹⁾ - Voyage Linux is bootable on SD card and works well in read-only mode, remounting as read-write and writing changes to SD sometimes results in kernel panic which often leads to non-operable system

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• Fixed/added:
1. synced and rebased with coreboot official repo commit afc74ca
• Known issues:
1. some PCIe cards are not detected on certain OSes
2. booting with 2 USB 3.x sticks plugged in apu4 sometimes results in detecting only 1 stick
3. certain USB 3.x sticks happen to not appear in boot menu

• Fixed/added:
1. Rebased coreboot repository to official coreboot 4.8.0
• Known issues:
1. some PCIe cards are not detected on certain OSes
2. booting with 2 USB 3.x sticks plugged in apu4 sometimes results in detecting only 1 stick
3. certain USB 3.x sticks happen to not appear in boot menu

• Fixed/added:
1. Updated SeaBIOS to 1.11.0.5
2. Updated sortbootorder to v4.6.9
3. S1 button support for apu5b
• Known issues:
1. some PCIe cards are not detected on certain OSes
2. booting with 2 USB 3.x sticks plugged in apu4 sometimes results in detecting only 1 stick
3. certain USB 3.x sticks happen to not appear in boot menu

• Fixed/added:
1. infrastructure to include microcode update
2. support for new building system pce-fw-builder
3. building is now possible with official coreboot-sdk container
4. retrieving board serial number
• Known issues:
1. some PCIe cards are not detected on certain OSes
2. booting with 2 USB 3.x sticks plugged in apu4 sometimes results in detecting only 1 stick
3. certain USB 3.x sticks happen to not appear in boot menu

• Fixed/added:
1. support for apu1
2. S1 button feature (serial console enable)
3. switched SATA controller mode from IDE to AHCI mode
• Known issues:
1. some PCIe cards are not detected on certain OSes
2. booting with 2 USB 3.x sticks plugged in apu4 sometimes results in detecting only 1 stick
3. certain USB 3.x sticks happen to not appear in boot menu

• Fixed/added:
1. SD card low performance
2. SMBIOS wrong entries
3. xHCi is enabled (timeouts has been adjusted in SeaBIOS, as a result USB 3.x sticks detection rate increased)
• Known issues:
1. pfSense installation may fail on hard disks - workaround
2. some PCIe cards are not detected on certain OSes

• Fixed/added:
1. SeaBIOS 1.11.0.3 - enabled UDMA for faster boot, fixed serial console disable bug
2. screen is refreshed properly in Memtest86+
• Known issues:
1. pfSense installation may fail on hard disks
2. pfSense can not be installed from USB due to xHCi disabled
3. USB 3.x sticks are handled like USB 2.0 sticks, but are detected
4. wrong names in SMBIOS causes some modules not being loaded on certain OSes
5. SD card performance is lower than in legacy releases
6. some PCIe cards are not detected on certain OSes

• Fixed/added:
1. SeaBIOS 1.11.0.2 - fixes bug with serial console output shift
2. disabled xHCI, force EHCI controller on front ports
• Known issues:
1. pfSense installation may fail on hard disks
2. pfSense can not be installed from USB due to xHCi disabled
3. USB 3.x sticks are handled like USB 2.0 sticks, but are detected
4. wrong names in SMBIOS causes some modules not being loaded on certain OSes
5. refreshing screen dos not work properly in Memtest86+
6. serial console disable option does not affect SeaBIOS
7. SD card performance is lower than in legacy releases
8. some PCIe cards are not detected on certain OSes

• Fixed/added:
1. apu4 support
2. updated SeaBIOS 1.11.0.1 (removed sgabios)
3. Memtest86+ is built from coreboot Memtest86+ repository
• Known issues:
1. pfSense installation may fail on hard disks - workaround
2. USB 3.x sticks happen to not appear in boot menu
3. wrong names in SMBIOS causes some modules not being loaded on certain OSes
4. restoring default configuration in sortbootorder works only for bootorder
5. refreshing screen dos not work properly in Memtest86+
6. serial console disable option does not affect SeaBIOS
7. SeaBIOS serial console output is sometimes wrongly shifted
8. SD card performance is lower than in legacy releases
9. some PCIe cards are not detected on certain OSes

• Fixed/added:
1. UARTc/c and mPCIe2 CLK enable/disable runtime configuration works now
• Known issues:
1. pfSense installation may fail on hard disks - workaround
2. USB 3.x sticks happen to not appear in boot menu
3. wrong names in SMBIOS causes some modules not being loaded on certain OSes
4. restoring default configuration in sortbootorder works only for bootorder
5. SD card performance is lower than in legacy releases
6. some PCIe cards are not detected on certain OSes

• Fixed/added:
1. date format in sign-of-life string
2. Memtest86+ does nto hang now
• Known issues:
1. pfSense installation may fail on hard disks - workaround
2. USB 3.x sticks happen to not appear in boot menu
3. wrong names in SMBIOS causes some modules not being loaded on certain OSes
4. UARTc/c and mPCIe2 CLK enable/disable runtime configuration do not work
5. restoring default configuration in sortbootorder works only for bootorder
6. SD card performance is lower than in legacy releases
7. some PCIe cards are not detected on certain OSes

• Fixed/added:
1. apu5 support
• Known issues:
1. pfSense installation may fail on hard disks - workaround
2. USB 3.x sticks happen to not appear in boot menu
3. wrong names in SMBIOS causes some modules not being loaded on certain OSes
4. Memtest86+ hangs
5. UARTc/c and mPCIe2 CLK enable/disable runtime configuration do not work
6. restoring default configuration in sortbootorder works only for bootorder
7. SD card performance is lower than in legacy releases
8. some PCIe cards are not detected on certain OSes

• Fixed/added:
1. Updated SeaBIOS to 1.11.0.5
2. Updated sortbootorder to v4.6.9
3. S1 button support for apu5b
• Known issues:
1. certain USB 3.x sticks happen to not appear in boot menu

• Fixed/added:
1. infrastructure to include microcode update
2. support for new building system pce-fw-builder
3. Memtest86+ is now a part of coreboot build system and does not have to be built externally
• Known issues:
1. certain USB 3.x sticks happen to not appear in boot menu

• Fixed/added:
1. S1 button feature (serial console enable)
2. apu4 support
• Known issues:
1. certain USB 3.x sticks happen to not appear in boot menu

• Fixed/added:
1. fixed Kconfig defautl options for SeaBISO repo, console loglevel
2. SMBIOS wrong entries
3. restoring default features in srotbootorder available now
4. iPXE is built from official iPXE repository, no need to build it externally
5. updated SeaBIOS to 1.11.0.3 (xHCI timeouts adjusted - USB 3.x sticks detection rate increased)
• Known issues:
1. USB 3.x sticks happen to not appear in boot menu

• Fixed/added:
1. updated SeaBIOS to 1.11.0.2 (removed sgabios)
2. iPXE is built from official iPXE repository
• Known issues:
1. USB 3.x sticks happen to not appear in boot menu
2. wrong names in SMBIOS causes some modules not being loaded on certain OSes
3. restoring default configuration in sortbootorder works only for bootorder

• Fixed/added:
1. fixed date format in sign-of-life string
2. removed duplicated sign-of-life
3. sign-of-life do appears right after power on now
• Known issues:
1. USB 3.x sticks happen to not appear in boot menu
2. wrong names in SMBIOS causes some modules not being loaded on certain OSes

• Fixed/added:
1. apu5 support
• Known issues:
1. USB 3.x sticks happen to not appear in boot menu
2. wrong names in SMBIOS causes some modules not being loaded on certain OSes
3. restoring default configuration in sortbootorder works only for bootorder

• Fixed/added:
1. force mPCIe2 CLK option in sortbootorder
• Known issues:
1. USB 3.x sticks happen to not appear in boot menu
2. restoring default configuration in sortbootorder works only for bootorder

• Fixed/added:
1. sortbootorder is now available in Kconfig
• Known issues:
1. USB 3.x sticks happen to not appear in boot menu
2. restoring default configuration in sortbootorder works only for bootorder

• Fixed/added:
1. minor fixes to sortbootorder used letters
• Known issues:
1. USB 3.x sticks happen to not appear in boot menu
2. restoring default configuration in sortbootorder works only for bootorder