Samsung NVMe legacy BOOT ROM present on 950 Pro

I have both of them, but AFAIK the Intel 750 NVMe SSD doesn’t contain an NVMe Option ROM. Are you sure, that it has such in-box module?

I had a quick look around and could not find a tool to read/dump the firmware in Windows (although Linux looks like a better candidate based on the iso).

Do you know of such a tool?

@Fernando :
Unfortunately I have no experience with either one of these SSDs, my speculation is based on what I’ve read from others, so you most likely are correct that Intel 750 has no such Option ROM.

@chinobino :
Unfortunately I am unaware of such a tool for Windows. You should however be able to extract the Option ROM using a Linux live USB.


Guide for crating a Ubuntu live USB: https://tutorials.ubuntu.com/tutorial/tu…tick-on-windows

Open up a terminal.

Become root, list PCI devices:

sudo su
lspci


Look for the ID of the SSD (something like this):
01:00.0 Non-Volatile memory controller: Samsung Electronics Co Ltd Device a802 (rev 01)


Go to the devices, and list them:
cd /sys/bus/pci/devices/
ls


Look for a matching ID (something like this):
0000:01:00.0


Extract the Option ROM using the ID found previously:
cd 0000:01:00.0/
echo 1 > rom
cat rom > /tmp/image.rom
echo 0 > rom


Save /tmp/image.rom to the USB drive or somewhere else accessible after reboot.

These should result in image.rom containing the Option ROM, unfortunately however I have no SSD with an Option ROM.

Well I have an image.rom from the PCI Device ID the SSD was listed under:

image.zip

@chinobino :
Thank you very much for extracting the Option ROM.

Seems to be legitimate to me. Has a legacy Option ROM and a UEFI driver. Vendor ID, Device ID and checksum are all correct.

I will provide an update once I had a chance to experiment with.

I did some testing using my Samsung 960 Pro and the Samsung 950 Pro Option ROM.

I’ve modifyed the Vendor ID, Device ID and checksum values and inserted the Option ROM into my UEFI BIOS. I’ve also removed all three AMI NVMe modules from the BIOS.

Although the Option ROM enabled the BIOS to recognize the SSD and even the partition table, reading the directory structure resulted in random garbage. It did not cause any data corruption, but note that I haven’t tried to write anything to the SSD.

Unfortunately I believe that this Option ROM has no support for any NVMe SSDs other than the Samsung 950 Pro.

Note that in the article How To Boot an NVME SSD from a Legacy BIOS (non UEFI) w/ Intel 750 Series SSD I’ve found that even though the Intel 750 has an Option ROM, it only contains an UEFI driver, no legacy Option ROM.

@davidm71

Can you please describe step by step, how you manage to get the Plop to work, when you integrate it into Bios via Option Rom.
I try with the Option Rom "Vmware Nvme rom driver",
but after 1 second the message of Plop bootmanager appeared, it hangs with blinking cursor, so I never see the Plop boot menu
Dietmar



Honestly I don’t remember. Kind of a blur. Sorry but I think ultimately I was unsuccessful. Other guys on this forum may have had success with alternative methods. Good luck.

Guys, I managed with the help of oprom from the Samsung 950 Pro to make it boot as a system from m.2 to Award BIOS. If anyone is interested I can help with it.

Yes, brother, tell me please! And how to modify legacy bios to boot nvme with asus p5k?

@Gman777
I posted the guide here. [Guide] Award/Phoenix BIOS Modding (8)
But you do not have an Award BIOS, but an AMI BIOS, so you need to use another way to add the module to the BIOS.
For Award - cbrom. For AMI - MMTOOL.

P.S. ASUS P5K has an Intel P35 chipset, so the first slot works in PCI Express x16 1.1 mode, the author’s slot works in PCI Express x4 1.1 mode.
Is it worth doing this.

Do you have an nvme driver file that needs to modify AMI bios in MMTool???

@Flaky @Ethaniel @chinobino @Dagal @davidm71 @Uruguayo @eierhals
A Guide about how to get an NVMe SSD bootable on systems with a Legacy BIOS by using an NVMe Option ROM is not easy to find within this Forum and I doubt, that any newbie will search for it within the “BIOS Modules” Sub-Forum.
Since there seems to be a strong demand for it, an easy to understand AIO Step-by-step Guide for PCs with a non-UEFI BIOS would be much appreciated by the Forum visitors. The best solution would be a new thread with the topic “[HowTo] Get full NVMe support for Systems with a non-UEFI BIOS” (or similar) within >this< Sub-Forum.
Who is willing to do that?
Once it will be done, all the matching, but currently scattered contributions/requests can be merged into the new thread.

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This is a great idea, by completing this project we will help many!:+1:t2: It is necessary to deal with this topic!:v:t3: Too bad I don’t have much experience with this! But something, with your help, I managed!:wink:

@Fernando give me some time to write it down. I modded a third H8 BIOS with it. It was easy with the tools we collect for it.

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How did you unpack the 2B0QBXX7.enc file?

@Gelip
There is no need to extract the NVMe OptionROM yourself. You can find it >here<. You only have to customize the HardwareIDs of the related NVMe Controller.

@Fernando
This is not the point.
I already have a modified BIOS of the motherboard with the Samsung 950 NVMe disk legacy firmware + UEFI DXE NvmExpressDxe_5.ffs driver:
https://msfn.org/board/topic/178182-xp-pro-x64-os-boot-nvme/?do=findComment&comment=1227567

I thought that maybe the Samsung_SSD_970_EVO_Plus_4B2QEXM7.iso firmware update would add booting function from the NVMe disk but not. When I boot PC the from the ISO file, I have a message:

No supported SSD detected for Firmware Update!!!

@Gelip
The only NVMe SSD, which has an NVMe Option ROM within its Firmware, is the Samsung 950 Pro.
If your mainboard BIOS contains an NVMe EFI module, you can install Win10 or Win11 onto your Samsung 970 EVO in UEFI mode.

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