new bios for Gigabyte GA-J1900N-D3V baytrail-D board

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speculatrix
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new bios for Gigabyte GA-J1900N-D3V baytrail-D board

Post by speculatrix » Tue Apr 29, 2014 3:11 am

my contact at Gigabyte sent me a zip of the latest BIOS.

the file in the ZIP is called J190ND3V.F3c and is 8388608 bytes, its MD5 hash is d41f32c0e114d22834ea349f36e75aac

I don't have a board to test it on. If someone wants to try it, send me a PM and I'll upload it for you to try, full disclaimers as you expect.


--p.s --
the thread that sparked this all off was this, about Baytrail-D motherboards.
viewtopic.php?f=28&t=66777
Last edited by speculatrix on Wed Apr 30, 2014 6:56 am, edited 1 time in total.

psychowood
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Re: new bios for Gigabyte GA-J1900N-D3V baytrail-D board

Post by psychowood » Tue Apr 29, 2014 3:36 am

Interesting, I'm still waiting for my J1900N to be dispatched but I'd gladly take a chance to test it. Do you have any changelog?

speculatrix
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Re: new bios for Gigabyte GA-J1900N-D3V baytrail-D board

Post by speculatrix » Tue Apr 29, 2014 9:04 am

I sent a PM. I don't want to post the BIOS publically as I don't know whether it's any use at all, nor do I have any permission from Gigabyte to disseminate it.

gietrzy
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Re: new bios for Gigabyte GA-J1900N-D3V baytrail-D board

Post by gietrzy » Wed Apr 30, 2014 6:35 am

Thank you spectulatrix.

Guys I've flashed my D3V. It was smooth and easy. so give it a try if you've experienced any discomfort.

speculatrix
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Re: new bios for Gigabyte GA-J1900N-D3V baytrail-D board

Post by speculatrix » Wed Apr 30, 2014 6:43 am

so far I've PM'd people a link to the zip file and had reports that nothing breaks. What I would be interested to know is whether people think it's fixed the problems mentioned here about USB, and running headless:

https://forum.pfsense.org/index.php?topic=73518.0

speculatrix
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Re: new bios for Gigabyte GA-J1900N-D3V baytrail-D board

Post by speculatrix » Wed Apr 30, 2014 7:52 am

psychowood wrote:Interesting, I'm still waiting for my J1900N to be dispatched but I'd gladly take a chance to test it. Do you have any changelog?
there was no changelog, no text file, simply the BIOS image in a zip file.

speculatrix
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Re: new bios for Gigabyte GA-J1900N-D3V baytrail-D board

Post by speculatrix » Fri May 02, 2014 2:58 pm

a not so happy buyer of this board writes at Amazon
http://www.amazon.co.uk/GIGABYTE-GA-J19 ... ewpoints=1


useful comments on Amazon reviews of the J1800 board which suggest that F2 and earlier BIOS is truly terrible, but the F3 is better. Some reviews also suggest how to update the BIOS without running Windows 8.
http://www.amazon.com/Gigabyte-Dual-Cor ... B00IFE4VF8

speculatrix
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Re: new bios for Gigabyte GA-J1900N-D3V baytrail-D board

Post by speculatrix » Thu May 08, 2014 12:18 am

--deleted--
Last edited by speculatrix on Wed May 28, 2014 3:11 pm, edited 1 time in total.

speculatrix
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Re: new bios for Gigabyte GA-J1900N-D3V baytrail-D board

Post by speculatrix » Thu May 08, 2014 12:20 am

if you want to revert to the F2 bios, it's on Gigabyte's website
http://www.gigabyte.com/products/produc ... =4918#bios

psychowood
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Re: new bios for Gigabyte GA-J1900N-D3V baytrail-D board

Post by psychowood » Thu May 08, 2014 2:13 am

Sadly, I can't seem to boot freedos (or anything else :( ) from USB, I tried almost every usb flash drive I had at home (<2GB, Fat16 too). Any idea?

speculatrix
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Re: new bios for Gigabyte GA-J1900N-D3V baytrail-D board

Post by speculatrix » Thu May 08, 2014 6:34 am

does the BIOS support PXE boot? it's fairly easy to PXE boot a freedos image.


maybe you could make a USB image with iPXE?
http://rom-o-matic.eu/

psychowood
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Re: new bios for Gigabyte GA-J1900N-D3V baytrail-D board

Post by psychowood » Thu May 08, 2014 4:51 pm

speculatrix wrote:does the BIOS support PXE boot? it's fairly easy to PXE boot a freedos image.
It should, but does not work either :evil:
Timeout (PXE-E18) when connecting to the TFTP server (which is working, tested with another client). Perhaps it is not compatible with standard PXE, (different ports?) since it is a UEFI implementation?
speculatrix wrote:maybe you could make a USB image with iPXE?
http://rom-o-matic.eu/
I sincerely have no idea on how to use it, sorry :oops:

speculatrix
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Re: new bios for Gigabyte GA-J1900N-D3V baytrail-D board

Post by speculatrix » Fri May 09, 2014 4:16 am

psychowood wrote: Perhaps it is not compatible with standard PXE, (different ports?) since it is a UEFI implementation?
hm, so far I have fought a few battled with UEFI and only recently begun to win them! I've not tried UEFI PXE boot, chances are it's buggy on the Gigabyte F1 bios.

All I can offer is this:
https://access.redhat.com/site/document ... g-efi.html

psychowood
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Re: new bios for Gigabyte GA-J1900N-D3V baytrail-D board

Post by psychowood » Fri May 09, 2014 5:38 am

speculatrix wrote: All I can offer is this:
https://access.redhat.com/site/document ... g-efi.html
Thanks, but that is the "standard" pxe boot, which is not working on this board (at least, not for me, not on F1). What I'll try is (if possible at all) booting iPXE from a USB UEFI stick, just in case it will override the gigabyte PXE boot, but I'm not sure on how to tell efi to boot ipxe (perhaps using the .efi spnonly available at run-o-matic). I'll havo to study :) .

I'll post an update tomorrow, my last chance is finding a sata optical drive to boot an iso.

speculatrix
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Re: new bios for Gigabyte GA-J1900N-D3V baytrail-D board

Post by speculatrix » Fri May 09, 2014 6:04 am

psychowood wrote: I'll post an update tomorrow, my last chance is finding a sata optical drive to boot an iso.
can you not set the BIOS to legacy mode?

psychowood
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Re: new bios for Gigabyte GA-J1900N-D3V baytrail-D board

Post by psychowood » Fri May 09, 2014 7:15 am

speculatrix wrote:
psychowood wrote: I'll post an update tomorrow, my last chance is finding a sata optical drive to boot an iso.
can you not set the BIOS to legacy mode?
I can (and I did), but PXE is only available using UEFI (at least, the "Network Stack" description in the BIOS is "enable UEFI PXE boot support"), so it is a no go.

psychowood
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Re: new bios for Gigabyte GA-J1900N-D3V baytrail-D board

Post by psychowood » Sun May 11, 2014 1:59 pm

OK, I managed to install F3C using an usb formatted flash card, I used Rufus with the defailt settings, with the embedded FreeDos option. I also esperienced a Recovery Flash from Dual Bios before trying Rufus, I don't know if it can be related.

I have to say that the F3C BIOS seems quite stable, it provides a lot of previously missing options (working PXE legacy boot, USB support, advanced options), you have my biggest thanks for providing the file :mrgreen:

Sadly, now that I can boot from USB, I discovered that this board is not compatibile with ESXi (tried both 5.5 and 5.1), after struggling for days I'll return it because it seems that it cannot replace my D2700MUD :(

speculatrix
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Re: new bios for Gigabyte GA-J1900N-D3V baytrail-D board

Post by speculatrix » Wed May 28, 2014 1:52 pm

Gigabyte have now made the F3 official on their website, so I have removed the downloadable file off my web server
http://www.gigabyte.com/products/produc ... =4918#bios

speculatrix
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Re: new bios for Gigabyte GA-J1900N-D3V baytrail-D board

Post by speculatrix » Wed May 28, 2014 4:03 pm

I received my board yesterday and am now having the "exciting" challenge of updating its BIOS.

I tried using PXE-UEFI from here:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UEFI/PXE-netboot-install
and got grub starting up, then I got a bit over eager and tried to boot DOS so I could try running the Gigabyte flash program.. before even getting that far, it reset and reported it was restoring the BIOS. Hmm.

There are a bunch of TLAs that are not explained, for example "CSM" is Compability Support Module Configuration... and is where you get to turn off UEFI and set legacy modes. If you turn off UEFI by switching to legacy, you need to reset and re-enter the BIOS settings before other menus change.

Once you've done this it seems to be possible to boot off a plain USB thumb drive, but no sign of legacy PXE function :-(

Then I created a freedos USB drive, I'd downloaded the 256MB image which should be more than enough, right, to hold the Gigabyte bios image and flasher. Sadly, it crashes and resets the motherboard when I try and boot the full freeDOS. I did manage to boot the minimal "fdodin" image, but that's too tiny to be useful.

--- next attempt ---

OK, so I thought "aha, iPXE". I created an iPXE image for USB - very easy in fact, and copied over a usb flash drive, and voila, iPXE started and talked to my PXE server.
Unfortunately, there was a brief flash as the pxelinux.cfg/default menu appeared and then it crashed and reset.

Wow, this motherboard's F1 BIOS version really is a bag of ****.
Last edited by speculatrix on Wed May 28, 2014 11:52 pm, edited 1 time in total.

speculatrix
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Re: new bios for Gigabyte GA-J1900N-D3V baytrail-D board

Post by speculatrix » Fri May 30, 2014 2:12 am

In the end I succumbed to installing Win8.1 (used the generic activation key that gives you a few day's grace, see below). Even the 32 bit version didn't run after installing, so I had to install the 64 bit. That then broke the EfiFlash.exe program, so then I tried the @BIOS app. The "@BIOS" updater program listed in the support downloads for the motherboard (the one with the file name mb_utility_appcenter_soc.exe) specifically for BayTrail-D "SOC" processors WON'T install, it just crashes! In desperation I tried a more generic program and it worked!

Here's what to do: download their generic @BIOS updater from here (I used the "Version B14.0418.1", the one whose update says it now supports Intel 8/9 series)
http://www.gigabyte.com/support-downloads/Utility.aspx
direct link: http://download.gigabyte.eu/FileList/Ut ... atbios.zip

Unpack the ZIP and run the installer. It will NOT give you a start menu item (at least, I couldn't find one), so drill down to c:\program files (x86)\gigabyte and then you can run it from there as administrator. It should identify the BIOS, and you can update it from a file, find the F3 bios image on your PC and voila. It takes a few minutes. It will need to reboot.

After the update, hitting DEL to get into the BIOS settings should show version F3. You still need to save/quit and reset if you change settings in the CSM section and go back into BIOS settings before you see the right things in the BOOT menu.



Win 8.1 generic keys - these are built in to the installer and will give you just a few days use before you'd need to enter a proper product key. They are NOT pirate keys!!!
Core: 334NH-RXG76-64THK-C7CKG-D3VPT
Professional: XHQ8N-C3MCJ-RQXB6-WCHYG-C9WKB

Carbonkid1985
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Re: new bios for Gigabyte GA-J1900N-D3V baytrail-D board

Post by Carbonkid1985 » Fri Sep 05, 2014 6:12 am

Good board lots of features for the form factor but installing any version of windows except windows 8 was a pain in the arse.

This is how I achieved it. (taken from a forum post from Lance W http://www.newegg.com/global/au/Product ... 6813128698)

Follow STEP 1 on this guide: http://www.gigabytenordic.com/wordpress ... byte-brix/

Download the latest BIOS (http://uk.gigabyte.com/products/product ... RWD=0#bios)

Copy ALL the files to the newly created bootable USB drive (INCLUDING AUTOEXEC.BAT!)

Go into BIOS and in the Advanced tab set CSM to UEFI and Legacy - Set network to DISABLED, Storage to Legacy First, Video to UEFI First and the last one to UEFI first.

Set the system to boot from USB.

Reboot with no DVD in your system, and boot off your USB drive - the autoexec file will automatically flash the BIOS for you. Trying to run EFIFlash manually will result in an error code that it can't read the BIOS file - you HAVE to do it AUTOMATICALLY. Very odd.

The BIOS should be erased, flashed and verified. Following this it will prompt for a key press and turn off the system.

After that you can boot off your Win7 installer (DVD or USB, whatever you chose) and it should work just fine.

xan_user
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Re: new bios for Gigabyte GA-J1900N-D3V baytrail-D board

Post by xan_user » Fri Sep 05, 2014 5:43 pm

WELCOME TO SPCR!

Thanks for the info!

JustMeHere
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Re: new bios for Gigabyte GA-J1900N-D3V baytrail-D board

Post by JustMeHere » Fri Sep 19, 2014 6:32 pm

Very important warning: Your "MS-DOS" disk must be your first disk.

I spent hours trying to reflash the machine. I finally did a Grub2 boot by reading the MS-DOS portion of the Grub2 manual. Very easy.

Also note: I'm having problems with the Linux 3.16 kernel. I've seen reports against the 3.15 kernel too. I am stable so far with 3.11. The problem is the text interface is shifted to the right.

I got the "BIOS Corruption" when running the 3.16 kernel. Not sure of the cause.

You many need to disconnect your HDD in order to USB boot the MS-DOS USB disk.

UPDATE: Corrupted BIOS again (note technically UEFI based systems dont have BIOS, but Gbyte still calls it that) F3 may be unstable. This time memtest86+ caused it.
Last edited by JustMeHere on Fri Sep 19, 2014 8:27 pm, edited 1 time in total.

JustMeHere
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Re: new bios for Gigabyte GA-J1900N-D3V baytrail-D board

Post by JustMeHere » Fri Sep 19, 2014 6:38 pm

Looks like F3 adds legacy PXE boot. That is you can use pxelinux.0 to boot. You will need your network boot CSM set to Legacy First. I currently have all of my settings to legacy first except the last one. Its UEFI first.

UPDATE: Use the realtek pxe boot. I'd go to the boot page in the system setup and disable the UEFI network boot options.

speculatrix
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Re: new bios for Gigabyte GA-J1900N-D3V baytrail-D board

Post by speculatrix » Fri Sep 19, 2014 10:40 pm

My system is in use 24x7 as a firewall and fileserver, runs opensuse x64
I am using the default kernel version, 3.11. I did try a newer one not long after installing, 3.14 I think, but there were network issues with the kernel, not tried since because of the role of the box.
It's fairly stable, crashes about once a month due to a kernel panic whose cause I haven't identified. It's predecessor, a jetway atom n330 board almost never crashed.

JustMeHere
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Re: new bios for Gigabyte GA-J1900N-D3V baytrail-D board

Post by JustMeHere » Sat Sep 20, 2014 7:25 am

Here are the steps to Grub Boot:

Make the USB Thumb drive as described above and attach to the system.
Boot off of a Linux Distro with Grub2. (or figure out how to install it on your thumb drive maybe)
Escape to the Grub command prompt by typing C at the Grub menu.
Type 'ls' and look for your USB drive. It will be listed as a disk and a partition only.

Then "drivemap -s (hd0) (hd1)" and swap your USB drive to "hd0". The hd1 parameter may be different for you.
set root=(hd1,msdos1)
chainloader +1 <-- MS-DOS needs to be booted via a chain loader
boot <-- wait for the flash to load and finish.

I'm going to have to reflash F3 again if I want to reinstall, when I do, I will document better.
For education: http://www.gnu.org/software/grub/manual/grub.pdf
Read section 4.3.3

speculatrix
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Re: new bios for Gigabyte GA-J1900N-D3V baytrail-D board

Post by speculatrix » Sun Sep 21, 2014 3:28 pm

I thought these Gigabyte boards have dual bios?

once I reflashed one of them with F3, I then flashed the backup.

JustMeHere
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Re: new bios for Gigabyte GA-J1900N-D3V baytrail-D board

Post by JustMeHere » Sun Sep 21, 2014 7:43 pm

They do have dual "bios" I cant find a command in the system setup to copy to the second bios. When it recovers, it is reverting to the backup bios which is F2.

I need to look around for a way to save the main to the backup (maybe not a good idea though considering my current problems)

Remembr BIOS and UEFI are not the same and the terms should not be used interchangeably, though I find that tough too.

speculatrix
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Re: new bios for Gigabyte GA-J1900N-D3V baytrail-D board

Post by speculatrix » Mon Sep 22, 2014 1:07 am

yes, it's too easy to slip back to old naming especially when the vendor plays fast and loose.

I think when I did it, that I used the gigabyte flashing tool running on Win8.1 to flash both of them, once I was happy that the F3 flashed firmware was working. Given the F1 version was so bad, I figured that F3 couldn't be any worse, so did it within ten minutes rather than do any extended testing!

xsandro
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Re: new bios for Gigabyte GA-J1900N-D3V baytrail-D board

Post by xsandro » Sun Sep 28, 2014 7:31 am

speculatrix wrote:yes, it's too easy to slip back to old naming especially when the vendor plays fast and loose.

I think when I did it, that I used the gigabyte flashing tool running on Win8.1 to flash both of them, once I was happy that the F3 flashed firmware was working. Given the F1 version was so bad, I figured that F3 couldn't be any worse, so did it within ten minutes rather than do any extended testing!
Can you please tell me which program you used to update the backup bios? Thanks.

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