% Retroboot 20201228 beta release, 28 December 2020
% Leah Rowe
% 28 December 2020

*Release date: December 28th, 2020.*

This release is available from the [download page](../download.md) with ROM
images and source code provided. Please read the
[Retroboot documentation](../docs/) if you wish to learn how to use them.
Support is provided at the
[Retroboot IRC channel](https://webchat.freenode.net/?channels=retroboot).

Retroboot is a new coreboot distribution, forked from the Libreboot 20160907
build system. The purpose of Retroboot is to provide pre-compiled ROM images
for any system that coreboot supports. Retroboot, based on coreboot, provides
hardware initialization on supported x86 computers; it sets up the hardware and
boots an operating system such as GNU+Linux, BSD and Windows.

Retroboot provides an automated build system that compiled coreboot, GRUB,
SeaBIOS and various other required software, with specific configurations. It
provides a completely automated way to build and test ROM images of coreboot,
in various configurations. Each board added to Retroboot can specify a coreboot
version at a specific commit ID from the coreboot Git repository, and custom
patches. It can then be used with any number of coreboot payloads such as GRUB,
SeaBIOS and (planned for a future release) Tianocore and linuxboot. Read the
documentation on the Retroboot website for more information about each system
supported in the Retroboot build system.

The aim of Retroboot is to make coreboot easy to use. Coreboot is notoriously
difficult to build, and very much not user friendly. Retroboot provides user
focused documentation and professional support based on years of experience
dealing with coreboot. I, Leah Rowe, am the founder of the Retroboot project
and I am also the founder of the [Libreboot project](https://libreboot.org/).

This release, marked beta, released on 28 December 2020, supports the following
machines:

* ThinkPad X220 (untested at the time of release)
* ThinkPad X230 (tested on a few machines at the time of release)
* ThinkPad X230 Tablet (untested at the time of release, but X230 is the same
  board as the X230T, with minor differences, so the X230T ROMs should work)
* ThinkPad T60 with ATI Mobility Radeon X1400, PCI ID 1002:7145 (tested on one
  machine at the time of release)

NOTE: *tested* in this context means that the machine can be observed booting
a Linux kernel. Also, Windows 10 was confirmed to boot on the X230 with Intel
VGA ROM and SeaBIOS payload. (we recommend the use of free operating systems
like GNU+Linux).

For documentation, refer to the accompnying source code release archive.
Documentation is included in that archive. You can also refer to the
documentation hosted directly at <https://retroboot.org/> and this is more
recommended due to it being more up to date.

This is a public *beta* release. The ROM images provided in this release are
NOT guaranteed to boot correctly on your machine. If you install this, you
should make sure that you have SPI flashing equipment (for flashing 25XX NOR
flash) and, ideally, debugging equipment such as EHCI debug dongle.

Extensive testing is required for all of the ROMs in this release, so user
testing is highly encouraged! The plan for Retroboot is to have long, long
periods of *testing* releases, before versions are marked stable (similar to
how the Debian project operates).

