MSI Pro Z690-A WiFi DDR4 with Alder Lake 12900K

User Support HCL Reports
41

You can disable Intel Management Engine by manually setting the bit a 0x1DE, which should be possible using flashrom with the internal programmer.

Keep in mind, doing this incorrectly can brick the board unless you have an external programmer. I have been able to flash the chip with the ch341a_spi, but it requires a special wson probe to interface with the chip.

I have done it on my system, and it removes mei from lsmod and device reference in /sys/class/mei. It’s been running for some hours now, so I believe it’s stable. The onboard wifi seems to need mei to work, and disabling mei makes the onboard wifi stop working.

I have only tested it with Dasharo, and it might not work with the stock MSI firmware. I’ve seen one person say it makes the stock firmware boot loop, which could be some protection in the msi firmware that detects the modification.

For more info.

1 Like
42

Found one major issue with disabling mei, suspending the system no longer works and cash the system to the point it’s unable to boot normally.

The only way to boot the system after suspend is shorting the JBAT1 jumper to reset the CMOS.

2 Likes
43

Dasharo 1.1.0 has been released for the Z690

It’s now possible to disable ME as a firmware feature, among other things.

https://docs.dasharo.com/variants/msi_z690/releases/

v1.1.0 - 2022-11-22

Added

Changed

  • Added new ACPI Platform driver that installs coreboot exposed ACPI tables and all allows native EDK2 ACPI table protocol to install new tables, e.g. Firmware Performance Data Table, BGRT (Boot Logo) of VFCT (AMD GPU ACPI table)
  • Secure Boot is now disabled by default with all keys erased
  • iPXE is now built from source using coreboot-sdk and included externally into UEFI Payload
  • Dasharo setup menu full screen mode support
  • Disabled PCIe ASPM and Clock PM for better PCIe device compatibility
  • Disabled GPIO programming by FSP, coreboot handles the GPIO completely. This additionally fixes a bug in FSP which did not enable SATA DEVSLP properly.
  • Changed Super I/O pin for PECI mode to reflect vendor firmware setting
  • Switched from IOT FSP to public ADL Client FSP
  • Switched to include microcode from public Intel microcode repository
  • Disabled PCIe hotplug
  • Network boot disabled by default, now configurable via menu option

Fixed

Known issues

1 Like
44

Everything works in 4.2

Qubes-HCL-Micro_Star_International_Co___Ltd_-MS_7D25-20230910-125833.yml (1.0 KB)

layout:
  'hcl'
type:
  'Desktop'
hvm:
  'yes'
iommu:
  'yes'
slat:
  'yes'
tpm:
  'unknown'
remap:
  'yes'
brand: |
  Micro-Star International Co., Ltd.
model: |
  MS-7D25
bios: |
  Dasharo (coreboot+UEFI) v1.1.2
cpu: |
  12th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i9-12900K
cpu-short: |
  FIXME
chipset: |
  Intel Corporation 12th Gen Core Processor Host Bridge/DRAM Registers [8086:4660] (rev 02)
chipset-short: |
  FIXME
gpu: |
  Intel Corporation AlderLake-S GT1 [8086:4680] (rev 0c)
  
  NVIDIA Corporation GP106 [GeForce GTX 1060 3GB] [10de:1c02] (rev a1) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
gpu-short: |
  FIXME
network: |
  Intel Corporation Alder Lake-S PCH CNVi WiFi [8086:7af0] (rev 11)
  Intel Corporation Ethernet Controller I225-V [8086:15f3] (rev 03)
memory: |
  65373
scsi: |
  ST3000DM001-1ER1 Rev: CC25
  ST3000DM001-1CH1 Rev: CC47
usb: |
  5
certified:
  'no'
versions:
  - works:
      'FIXME:yes|no|partial'
    qubes: |
      4.2.0-rc3
    xen: |
      4.17.2
    kernel: |
      6.4.7-1
    remark: |
      FIXME
    credit: |
      FIXAUTHOR
    link: |
      FIXLINK
1 Like
45

Thank you @renehoj for this update, which is online now!

1 Like
46

Is this the right place to ask about PS/2 Y-cables for the Z690 with Dasharo? MSI sells some PS/2 Y-cables along with their motherboards:

(This link has the part number K39-3002004-E06)

So far 2 Y-cables do not work for me, using 2 different PS/2 keyboards and 2 different PS/2 mice.
Is there a known working Y-cable?

I read that different PS/2 Y-cables can have different pinouts (PS/2 Port - ThinkWiki)

Thank you.