On Monday, February 5, 2018 at 4:39:16 PM UTC-5, Utility Panel wrote: > On Monday, February 5, 2018 at 4:33:57 PM UTC-5, awokd wrote: > > On Mon, February 5, 2018 9:20 pm, Utility Panel wrote: > > > Anyone interested in a pair of lightly used HP Z800 server work stations? > > > Great machines. Cannot run Qubes 4.0 correctly. > > > > Is the CPU in those not capable of it, or is it a manufacturer BIOS issue? > > If the latter, you might check to see if you can Coreboot it. Sometimes > > that can fix these issues too. > > Ah. I hadn't considered the Coreboot option. My understanding is that the > chipset is at fault.
Recommendation, if you'd like, for a budget/beater VT-d: I've picked up a couple of Lenovo Thinkpad W520 laptops off of Ebay recently. They were top of the line in 2011 (if you limited your choices to mobile CPUs only). They can be found around the $200-$300 mark (depending on luck, configuration and accessories). Additional things to look out for: Some units are dual core, but I'd look for the quad core ones: they have an i7-xxxxQM or XM processor which, unlike the duals, are built with with four working RAM slots giving a max of 32GB DDR3. Those without i7-xxxxQM or XM CPUs only have four slots but only two are working slots. 16GB can be a bit tight, esp. if you run any Win HVMs. Machine also supports up to four native SATA devices, two 6Gbps (internal HD, hotswap ultrabay HD with optional carrier), two 3Gbps (mSATA and hotswap external eSATA with optional cable). Always update the BIOS, most used w520 units come with the original 2011 BIOS but there is a 2015 or 2016 revision available that fixes some security issues (and may stop some linux kernel configs from having problems with the machine setup). Lastly: set BIOS to integrated graphics (not NVidia nor Optimus, just Integrated). Occasionally the Nvidia GPUs go bad but if it isn't enabled in BIOS, it won't prevent you from posting. I learned the hard way with the W520 I bought back in 2011...they won't post into BIOS if you enable a bad Nvidia GPU and now you have a brick. Brendan PS - The W520 also is the last W5xx to support a nice Thinkpad keyboard. :) -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "qubes-users" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/qubes-users/12a1946e-f588-4a64-bc6e-8cd449ef9942%40googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
