I just get my hands on a E3-1285 v4 and I would like to install it on my Dell Precision T1700 SFF. I flashed a custom A29 bios like a year ago that added the support of nvme boot using the guide on this forum. The T1700 SFF is using C226 chipset which should theoretically support Broadwell-based E3-1285v4 with CPUID 40671. However, the A29 bios only includes 40661, 40660, 306C1, 306C2, 306C3 and it is using “FIT” table. Now I am planning to to replace 40661 (size 6400) with 40671 (size 3800) using @Lost_N_BIOS guide.
From the original bios, I noticed there exists a 400h padding between those microcodes. As replacing 40661 with 40671 will increase the size of padding between 40671 and 40660. I am not sure about whether the increase or any changes on padding size will break the bios. I have included some screenshots and bios files for the works that I have done now. Any help would be much appreciated!
t1700_a28 is the original bios extracted from hdr t1700_a28_nvme is the bios that added nvme ffs module t1700_a28_nvme_broadwell_mcode is the bios that replaced 40661 with 40671 which results in extra padding
This is the original bios and the first 3 padding is 400h.
Now I replaced 40661 with 40671 and the padding size is increased.
Thanks for your prompt response! I shall put it in my Z97 rig and forget about the T1700 then. Since no OEM had ever released a PC using Socket 1150 Broadwell, I can assume no OEM PCs would support i5/i7 5th gen and Xeon E3 v4?
@reukiodo
I saw your post yesterday…since this user only posted in this thread and 4 yrs ago… probably its a hit and run or a get served and bailed out after using this forum guide for NVMe mod.
Anyway these machines usually do not accept bios mods flashed by normal system tools from DELL due to security, not always like this must very much so.
So it leave us with 2 options, Service_Mode jumper on the motherboard, dump, mod and flashed with FPT tool (From ME FW package tools) or an SPI programmer.
Bios region should be enough for mod but its advisable to perform full backups of the spi containing all regions
I will probably delay doing this until this system is easily replaceable. It would be nice to boot from NVMe, but booting from SATA ssd is fine for now, and not really worth the downtime risk of uncertainty.
2025-06 update:
So I had a good chunk of time today to play around with this (and a spare sata ssd for a clean windows install). I followed the guide mostly from https://tachytelic.net/2021/12/dell-optiplex-7020-nvme-ssd/ which allowed me to read the current t1700-a28 bios, following the guide to add the NvmExpressDxe_Small.zip (3.8 KB) injected and saved into the t1700-a28-nvme.bin bios, flashed with the 9.1 tool, and I can see Mass Storage in Slot 4 (where I have my nvme drive), but even trying to fresh install Win10 onto the nvme, it gets to the point where the install reboots, then just boots back to my install media. If I take out the install media, it says there is no device to boot from. I think that maybe this NvmExpressDxe_Small.ffs doesn’t have enough to allow the BIOS to see/read the UEFI partition on the nvme drive.
What might be interesting is that my bios dump does not match the file sizes that kaguya uploaded. Mine are much larger, maybe just padding, but interesting that the dump is much larger.
I also tried kaguya’s t1700_a28_nvme.bin which seemed to have the same results, with the addition of wiping out my service tag.
Any chance to “inject” support from c222 chipset to c226 on these dell machine ? I have the same problem too… I can desolder bios chip and reprogramming using an external programmer. I just want to use an e3-1285L v4 instead of my old i7-4790s cpu.
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