Hello all!
Got a handful of M920x motherboards from Lenovo with their clearance sales going on at their parts site. Just upgraded a handful of my M720qs to use the new boards but I’m running into an issue, that looks to be software based - Not hardware.
I’m wanting to use Intel AMT for the KVM and what have you, however, after dropping the i5-8400t from the M720q into the M920x boards, it looks like the only option is for “Intel ISM”, where the KVM option isn’t available. BUTTTT, I don’t think that’s a 100% true, because you can actually get KVM working through what I assume is a firmware bug, but implies that there’s potentially an artificial limit here.
If you enable Intel ME in the BIOS and then load into the Intel MEBx by pressing Ctrl+P you’re dropped into this screen
You’ll notice it says “Intel Standard Manageability Configuration” instead of the usual “Intel AMT Configuration”, where there’s no option for KVM on the second menu item, like you can see here on this M920q with an Intel i5-8500t.
But, you can actually select the “Manageability Feature Selection” and disable it. This will unprovision it, kinda. At this point, if you restart and then press Ctrl+P again - Then navigate to the “User Consent” option, KVM is now an option in there.
And it actually works, you can actually connect to it with MeshCommander or Intel’s new MGNT software
However, the issue is the second you leave the MEBx, it disables the KVM and IO redirect again.
Is there anyway to actually convert this to proper AMT or somehow permanently enable KVM with the ISM. Really don’t care either way, as it’s functionally the same. Or is it as simple as using a first party tool from Lenovo or Intel to flash the AMT firmware?
This can be replicated on both the original 2019 ME firmware and the latest one available.