Install RBoot on HP Elite 8200 SFF/MT and 6200 Pro Business


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!!BACKUP everything!! just in case something fails.

Specifications
Manufacturer HP
Name Compaq 8200 Elite SFF
Compaq 8200 Elite MT
Released 2011
Chipset Intel Q67
CPU Intel Sandy/Ivy Bridge
Graphics Intel HD Graphics or PCI-e low profile card
Memory Up to 32GB (4x8GB)
Architecture x86-64-v2 (+ older) (v1 for Sandy)
Intel ME/AMD PSP Present,
Flash chip SOIC-8 8MiB

libre BIOS/UEFI firmware

This document will teach you how to install RBoot, on your HP Elite 8200 SFF desktop motherboard. RBoot is a Free Software project that replaces proprietary BIOS/UEFI firmware.

Brief board info

Download from release

https://support.hp.com/gb-en/product/hp-compaq-8200-elite-small-form-factor-pc/5037931

MT is an identical board with a larger chassis and more powerful power supply:

https://support.hp.com/gb-en/product/hp-compaq-8200-elite-desktop-pc-series/5037940

Build from source

Disable security before flashing

./mk -b coreboot hp_elite_8200_sff_4mb_uefi

See: Disabling /dev/mem protection

Install RBoot

You can actually just compile the RBoot ROM for this, and flash the entire ROM.

Internal flashing from OEM BIOS is possible by setting a jumper on the board. Step by step instructions for this are below.

The coreboot project proper has technical details on why this works if you are interested. It also has external flashing instructions if you need to recover from an unbootable BIOS:

https://doc.coreboot.org/mainboard/hp/compaq_8200_sff.html

You can build the images for it in RBoot like so:

./mk -b coreboot hp_elite_8200_sff_8mb_uefi

Flash a ROM image

Software

Internal flashing not possible from factory firmware; you can still do it just fine, once RBoot is installed.

Use --ifd-i fdand then-i gbeand then-i bios` when flashing the RBoot image. This avoids overwriting Intel ME.

BE CAREFUL if flashing the IFD region on a system where the IFD region sizes differ from the factory default. Ditto BIOS region.

Internal flashing from vendor BIOS

Possible. Please make sure to only write the BIOS region; optionally write the IFD and GbE regions, but only flash the IFD region if it’s stock (factory), as the RBoot-provided IFD matches the vendor regions. If you previously changed them, adapt accordingly.

Do not, under any circumstance, overwrite the ME region.

HP 6200 Pro Business PC

According to this page from the vendor, HP BIOS updates are the same on both the 8200 SFF Elite and 6200 Pro Business desktop PCs; therefore, we believe that the RBoot config for 8200 SFF will also work on 6200 Pro Business PCs. That page is here: https://support.hp.com/fi-fi/drivers/selfservice/swdetails/hp-compaq-8200-elite-small-form-factor-pc/5037931/swItemId/vc-229778-2

The config for this board is courtesy of Riku Viitanen (Riku_V on RBoot IRC), who tested and confirmed the following functionality:

At the time of adding this board to RBoot, the following is untested:

According to the initial coreboot port from 2018, the following also works:

According to git logs, TPM should work, and a commit from 2018 at revision ID 39d0e2a2cf45e28cdddd0fe0c88f94ce527ab1ef in coreboot makes the TPM visible to operating systems.

Markdown file for this page: https://rboot.org/docs/install/hp8200sff.md

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