"Secure Boot" motherboards (to avoid)?

[Bob Willcox]

On Tue, Jul 08, 2014 at 05:18:22PM -0500, Bob Willcox wrote:
> On Mon, May 12, 2014 at 10:29:11AM -0600, Warren Block wrote:
> > On Sat, 10 May 2014, Ronald F. Guilmette wrote:
> > 
> > >
> > > Please forgive what may perhaps be an FAQ, answered somewhere (but noplace
> > > that I can find, apparently).
> > >
> > > I'll be buying a new motherboard soon to replace the aging 6.5 year old
> > > Gigabyte motherboard in my #2 "desktop" system.
> > >
> > > For whatever new motherboard I buy, do I need to be on the lookout
> > > for the possibility that it may incorporate some form of non-easily-
> > > disablable UEFI/SecureBoot firmware that will prevent me from booting
> > > anything other than Windoze?  Or is this generally a non-issue for
> > > stand-alone (sold-alone) consumer motherboards?
> > 
> > The ability to disable SecureBoot is supposed to be part of the UEFI 
> > spec.  Just for reference, I recently set up a UEFI Gigabyte H87-D3H for 
> > legacy booting.  It works fine.
> 
> I've been trying to get a brand new ASUS AM1I-A motherboard to boot FreeBSD
> 9.3 RC3 for awhile now. It installs just fine but then won't boot. It either
> silently drops back into BIOS, or on my most recent attempt throws up a I/O
> error message and tells me to hit Ctl-Alt-Del. As far as I can tell, Secure
> Boot is disabled in BIOS, but I'm not sure I trust what it is telling me.
> 
> BTW, as a test I was able to successfully install Windows 7 on the system and
> it did boot.
> 
> I'm beginning to think I need to return the mother board.

Well, I just got off the phone with ASUS and it is as I feared this
motherboard only supports Windows according to them. So, back it goes...

-- 
Bob Willcox    | The technological revolution that gave us radio and sound
bob at immure.com | recording happened so long ago now that all of the true
Austin, TX     | innovators have retired or passed away to be replaced by
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