Lenovo TS P320 UEFI/AptioV - Serial Console Redirection only working with graphics card inserted

Hi all,

I am trying to debug and fix a very annoying bug in UEFI (AMI Aptio V) of my ThinkStation P320.
Since the machine is going to be headless I removed the graphics card which saves me 13W in idle.
By modifying the Setup NVAR I was able to enable Serial Console Port Redirection.

With graphics card inserted I see the POST screen on serial console and can react to errors like "Checksum error. F1 to enter setup, F2 to resume."
(There is no need for attaching a monitor. The card just has to be inserted.)

Screenshot_2018-02-26_20-55-23.png



Without graphics card I only get some of the output via Serial and the system does not react to F1/F2/<whatever>.
Looks like everything from the modules PostScreenInfo and ErrorMessage is missing.

Screenshot_2018-02-26_20-56-50.png



Without graphics card, when there is no error, I am even able to enter setup.

Screenshot_2018-02-26_20-53-05.png




Is there anyone with an idea about what is wrong here and how I can solve that?

Best regards
Michael

Update: When I remove the ErrorMessage module at least I don’t get a blocking error that I cannot respond to… so the problem must be related to that module anyhow…

@c0d3z3r0 - did you ever get this solved? If not, maybe I can help you

I found your thread in my hunt for a P320 BIOS dump, do you think you can provide me a FPT BIOS region dump of the ME region on these systems (Or full programmer dump etc)?
If you can help, let me know and I’ll show you how to dump ME region with FPT

Thanks!

Well, I kind of "solved" this by simply patching out that wait for user input with UEFIPatch:

1
2
3
 
# Fix 'Press F1 / F2 ...'
B1DA0ADF-4F77-4070-A88E-BFFE1C60529A 10 P:B9FFFF0000448ACE448AC633D2:B905000000448ACE448AC633D2
B1DA0ADF-4F77-4070-A88E-BFFE1C60529A 10 P:B9FFFF0000E9:B905000000E9
 


Do you have a better solution?

Here is a dump of my board in factory state with the uefi removed because of serials and other stuff: https://paste.xinu.at/2JYQf/