Oddware: Minnowboard. Looking for project ideas.

[wierd_w]

So, i have a bit of oddware. It's an old Atom based SBC, called a minnowboard max.

 

https://elinux.org/Minnowboard:MinnowMax

 

Sadly it is EFI only, with no CSM, so no native DOS. 

 

However, I am looking for project ideas for it. It's just sitting around, when it could be fun.

[wierd_w]

Actually, i kinda lied.

 

There WAS a foss uefi bios based on coreboot with seabios, called sagebios, for this platform, but I cannot find a working download.

 

If someone can find it, i would be thankful.

[wierd_w]

I dug harder.  Found instructions for building coreboot+seabios for that platform.

 

Built a rom image. Will try to flash.

[wierd_w]

Coreboot + seabios appears to be successfully flashed.  This makes the minnowboard better suited for some older OSes, like win7 and older.

 

I can turn this thing into a fun little project now that it can boot older OSes. (It's too weak kneed to be a proper desktop with a more modern OS, but its ~2ghz clockspeed and 2gb of RAM is just right for an older OS.)

 

I am currently cooking a win7 install media USB stick. I will see how well this thing works with seabios.

Edited July 9, 2022 by wierd_w

[wierd_w]

Success!

 

I successfully installed win7 on it.  (Win7 is not able to be installed on an EFI only system. This meant that previously, the oldest I could run on this thing was win8, and that is... Yeah.)

I should be able to boot DOS, and any number of other legacy OSes on this thing now. Sadly, it has an HD Audio bus device, and HDMI only intel video, but it does have a real SATA port.

 

One thing I might try, is loading an old Novel Netware 5.1 install on it, just because. LOL