[OpenIndiana-discuss] Three specific N54L microserver related questions. Sort of Re: low low end server...

[Jim Klimov]

On 2014-02-19 11:13, Hans J. Albertsson wrote:
> Precisely.
>
> The only remaining question is why HP disabled these bits; Do they know
> something that makes their decision technically well-motivated, or are
> they just playing a marketing game?

I'd say marketing - the boxes are too good otherwise and might hurt
sales of more expensive models ;)

While researching for my brother's box to be reflashed (which we
ultimately did not do at all), I found this discussion about a build
of the modded BIOS for N36L/N40L/N54L:

http://www.avforums.com/threads/hp-n36l-n40l-n54l-microserver-updated-ahci-bios-support.1521657/

As posted in the thread, "There is a Russian BIOS floating around,
but no one is really sure what exactly has been changed on this
and also how up to date it is" and "I cannot comment on other peoples
work, but if this any reassurance to you I am an EX HP Employee that
used official sources to build that bios. At that time I was working
for HP. Haven't looked at the bios-mods site, I created mine as I did
not want something from an unknown origin."

I also have no idea about quality, nor affiliation with, any of these
modded BIOSes; but I can say that the ex-USSR IT community has a long
history of BIOS modding. If it is of any help, the http://www.rom.by/
has for the past decade or more published a number of auto-patchers
(to unlock features on BIOSes made from standard sources and trimmed
down by MoBo OEMs) as well as pre-built BIOSes for some models. I've
used it back in the day to enable overclocking and stuff :)

My 2c,
//Jim Klimov