autoport of p8h61-m-lx2 boots + has anyone managed to install Windows on a sandy/Ivy (or Haswell) coreboot desktop system?

[Dave Widyaatmadja]

Hello, the folllowing is probably not the best-worded E-mail ever (especially as someone completely new here even though a laptop I use has been running Coreboot for some time), but I hope it can still be understood anyway and without coming off in a negative way.

Tl;DR:

1. Possible new Asus p8h61-m-lx2 port

2. Coreboot + PCI-E dGPU + Windows install how (if someone here has expertise in setting up something like that)?

3. where/how to get i3-2100 vbios?

1. I was tempted by a relatively well-priced p8h61-m-lx2 with the hope of compatibility with the p8h61-m-lx preset, but I couldn't get the p8h61-m-lx2 to work with the p8h61-m-lx's preset, and while I haven't tried the one made for the p8h61-m-lx3 I have run Autoport on the p8h61-m-lx2 and (p.s. I don't really know what I'm doing) after some copying and pasting from the p8h61-m-lx folder and commenting out some of the lines Autoport generated it seems to boot. I think it may be a good idea to upload those Autoport results, but how exactly would I do that? (uploading the entire Coreboot directory complete with the GCC I believe would've been built inside of it along with various binary blobs would probably not be very wise?) I suspect just uploading the src/mainboard/system_manufacturer directory that was generated may be enough (or maybe do a new git clone of coreboot's repository manually 'patching' that with the generated folder plus some renaming and some edits to the relevant Kconfig files and uploading the 'patched' version somewhere?) but perhaps I missed something else Autoport spat out.

Working: ps/2 keyboard (in Seabios at least), i3-2100 iGPU with libgfxinit, PCI-E dGPU (booted with nomodeset but my video card doesn't seem to play well with Linux with the default settings regardless of BIOS) either with Graphics initialisation set to none or to the Card's vbios, Ethernet, Sound output to headphones, (probably all) USB ports, USB headers (only tested one at a time but all seem to work), PCI-E USB 3.0 card (only tested in Seabios).

Problem: I only had one Sata storage drive connected and it seems only the one SATA port to which it was connected when I ran Autoport worked once Coreboot was installed (ran Autoport at least twice and different ports when Autoport ran seem to have resulted in different operational ports under Coreboot).

Untested: Suspend, etc

2. Does anyone have experience of Installing Windows on a desktop Sandy/Ivy Bridge (or perhaps Haswell, using a patch that was never merged notwithstanding) system with coreboot on it (set to use a dGPU's vbios, I don't think Windows' installer can be accessed when booting with libgfxinit)? I'm thinking about trying to install Windows on the system with coreboot present but as coreboot's documentation warned I was met with a BSOD. The closest I seem to have come to a solution is booting that system (with coreboot set to load a vbios blob) into a distro and then using SSDTtime to extract what I believe can be referred to as the ACPI's .aml file, decompiling that with iasl, and then have the result of that replace the dsdt.asl present in the motherboard's directory, and then rebuild coreboot and flash the resulting BIOS.

The problem then for me was that while the computer somehow made it to the windows installer without a bluescreen, I couldn't get any input from the keyboard or mouse to work.

I'm honestly about out of ideas and ready to give up on that exercise, but I suppose asking here one last time if someone actually has done something like that successfully before actually giving up can't hurt.

3. One idea I haven't properly tested on the p8h61-m-lx2: does someone know where a vbios for the i3-2100 can be obtained? One thing I haven't really tried is installing Windows with the iGPU's vbios (a laptop from that era being able to run windows 10 for me when compiled with the vbios was the reason I thought the entire idea of coreboot + dGPU + Windows should be possible). I've got an i3-2100, how can I get the correct vbios file for it (assuming it would work as well as on the laptop?). I've tried the vbios files from I believe "Driver Revision: https://downloadcenter.intel.com/download/22520/Intel-Graphics-Media-Acceler... but none seem to work at all. While the web page implies that it only works with earlier iGPUs the readmes in the actual archive did make a reference to 2nd-gen processors, which kind of gave me hope.

Assuming I do manage to make it work with an iGPU vbios, would planning to have Windows be able to use a dGPU be overoptimistic?

Thanks in advance for the response.