System76 EC

System76 EC is a GPLv3 licensed embedded controller firmware for System76 laptops.

Documentation

• Supported embedded controllers
• Flashing firmware
• Debugging
• Creating a custom keyboard layout
• Development environment
• Adding a new board

Quickstart

Install dependencies using the provided script.

./scripts/deps.sh

If rustup was installed as part of this, then the correct cargo will not be available in the running session. Start a new shell session or source the env file to update PATH.

source $HOME/.cargo/env

Then build the firmware for your laptop model.

make BOARD=system76/<model>

See Flashing for how to use the new firmware image.

Releases

The EC firmware itself does not have tagged releases. Any commit of this repo may be used as a part of a System76 Open Firmware release.

In official releases the EC shares the same version as the BIOS firmware. Run the follow command from firmware-open to determine the corresponding EC commit for a release.

git ls-tree <release_hash> ec

Legal

System76 EC is copyright System76 and contributors.

System76 EC firmware is made available under the terms of the GNU General Public License, version 3. See LICENSE for details.

• firmware: GPL-3.0-only
• ecflash: LGPL-2.1-or-later
• ecsim: MIT
• ectool: MIT

Datasheets for the ITE embedded controllers used in System76 laptops cannot be shared outside of company. (However, the IT81202E datasheet is publicly available. While it uses a different core, a significant portion of the register information is the same as IT85878E/IT5570E.)

lib.rs:

Library for accessing System76 ECs First, construct an access method, using an object implementing the Access trait. Next, an Ec object can be constructed, which exposes the command interface.

There are some differences between targets and features that are listed below:

• AccessHid requires the hidapi feature. Only functional on USB ECs.
• AccessLpcDirect requires the redox_hwio feature and a nightly compiler. This method is only recommended for use in firmware with LPC ECs, as mutual exclusion is not guaranteed.
• AccessLpcLinux requires the std feature and linux target_os. Recommended for LPC ECs, as this method can utilize mutual exclusion.
• EcLegacy, Pmc, and SuperIo all require the redox_hwio feature and a nightly compiler. It is only recommended to use these in firmware, as mutual exclusion is not guaranteed.