@Flaky ,
This is what you’ve got to do to get your sm951 option-rom lacking ssd possibly working on an older legacy machine. Haven’t tested this out yet so can’t say if its going to work but here goes. First you need the VMWare NVME rom driver modded to match the device id of your SM951 and inserted into your bios. Your also going to need Plop boot manager configured as a Network Lan loader rom because your bios will not see your Nvme drive so you’ll need plop to load Windows from the ssd.
In the next couple days I’m going to try this out and see if it works or not. All I can say so far is that the Vmware Nvme rom driver has made it so my system doesnt lock up when I had an Intel 750 in there so I think it will work. I know there are a lot of guys out there that don’t have that problem but my old X58 board had that problem.
The other issue your going to have with this technique is lack of option rom space. I’ve already prepared my bios and got Plop booting from Lan but had difficulty getting it to work with the Intel Raid Rom at the same time. The system just didn’t have enough option rom space for both but got it going eventually.
Anyhow if this works I think it would be pretty amazing. I just ordered a SM961 to test this idea out. I know I should really put that old X58 out to pasture but having fun fwiw. Also playing around with Plop is kind of fun. Curious how it will perform.
Later.
Props to Ethaniel for finding the Vmware Nvme rom driver.