xyrantex: two different bios onboard mombo

[BeemerBiker]

These boards are available used for a very good price.  They have 7 PCIe slots which can handle Gen2 and Gen1 with about 31 lanes (atomics) available to the CPU.  Ubuntu 18.04.4 runs fine but I was unable to use my S9x00 AMD co-processors.  Not sure what the problem was as the driver had the GPUs listed as working and was released just a month ago but for 18.04.2

Currently I have win7x64 working fine with this board and with several S9050 co-oprocessors as part of a BOINC farm.  There is no SLIC and I never found the bios listed anywhere for download.  This board and other similar ones are sold as an HS-1235T server.

Using AFUD4252 I extracted the bios and used AMD tool 1.63 to add an SLIC.  The SSV3 method failed but the SSV2 method worked.  I have not tested the bios and may not unless I hear some good advice from this forum.  There are no socketed chips (rom bios) and even though the board was cheap ($29 USD) I do not want to brick it.

Anyone here able to get this board's bios modded and working?

What is the likelihood of recovering if the bios mod is not workable?

Is there a way to flash the bios and not overwrite the boot so as to allow a re-flash?

I have an unused copy of win7x64 home left over from an old "family 3-pack".  However, home works only with one socket, not two.  I have a pair of xeons on this motherboard.  I can put in 7 and upgrade to 10 but I think I am stuck with "home" and cannot use the 2nd cpu unless there is a workaround to fix "home" to handle a pair of cpus.  Is this possible?

I also see that win10x64 is available for $55 USD from PCdestinations which I may get instead of trying the mod.
https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/get...,5717.html

any advice?

thanks for looking!

[BeemerBiker]

Have not seen this before, not sure what is going on. 

I booted rufus USB (dos) with afud4252 /O to save the bios.  Then used AMI tool 1.63 with ssv2 to install SLIC.  I did not flash the bios as I was undecided.  Board was only $29 but wanted to check out the board first.

Installed win7x64, updated, installed AFUWIN440 and did another backup.  It was different, way different, but same size.  I then brought up NEO hex editor and examined both bios. There were similarities but they were different.  Not a case of bytes reversed or blocks shifted down.

I looked at the motherboard and there appear to be two soldered chips with ID tags which I take to be a pair of bios.

Systems are sold as NAT by Dell, HP, etc.  as HS-1235T usually

The bios obtained using freedos (afud4252) failed ssv3 but worked using ssv2
The bios obtained using afuwin440 worked using ssv3 unlike the dos version.
Both bios were patched using "intel" for manufacturer and "dell" for files including cert which verified.

The afuwin440 has option to write basic bios, excluding the boot block.  I am not sure about afud4252.

One strange thing I noticed.  The keyboard stops working after about 8 - 10 seconds of booting rufus freedos.  It is not possible to type fast enough to run afudos manually, it has to be executed from autoexec.bat.  Keystroke echoes can take 1-2 seconds and more.  This problem does not exist once Linux or windows is installed.  I was unable to get a complete listing of the commands to afudos as key strokes did not work after the page pause.

Anyone seen this before?

Not sure if I want to flash the bios, and if I do flash, which one should I used?