Running (or booting) a headless ASRock AM1B-ITX?

[easp]

I picked up an ASRock AM1B-ITX to use in a headless home server, and it is giving me heartburn when I try booting it up without a display attatched. I am hoping someone can help.

It was a little quirky at first. It would hang or take a long pause before getting to the bootloader if there were devices connected to the secondary SATA ports (provided by an ASMedia chip), but I figured out that disabling "Compatibility Support Mode" in the UFEI setup screen actually solved the problem.

Once running, it was solid, and so, when I finished configuring everything, I powered it down, unplugged it from my monitor, put it in my closet and powered it up. Five long beeps, and then nothing. According to ASRock's support site, that means VGA card not detected.

After much trial and error I've determined that when a display isn't detected, it looks for an PCI Express video card. When it doesn't find one, it seems to fail back to "safe" default settings, which means reactivating compatibility support mode which, ironically, hoses compatibility with my WD Green HDDs and it stops booting.

Any suggestions here? I'm using the latest motherboard firmware, according to their upgrade utility. Linux is set up for (U)EFI boot.

Is there some sort of cheap dummy display connector I could hook to the DVI or HDMI ports that would fool it into thinking there is a monitor attached?

Any help would be appreciated.

 

[Ketchup]

Most boards I have worked with have an option to boot off the onboard video first. The Primary Graphics setting should be set to onboard (it may be having issues with the auto setting.)

The drive with the OS should not be on the Asmedia controller.

I am not sure what the Green Drives have to do with this, but if you suspect as issue with these drives, put them on the AMD controller.

 

[crashtech]

Wow, that sucks. I wonder if you put some old dGPU in there if the mobo would boot to it and then not be able to detect the presence or absence of a monitor.

 

[master_shake_]

http://www.geeks3d.com/20091230/vga-hack-how-to-make-a-vga-dummy-plug/

 

[easp]

Most boards I have worked with have an option to boot off the onboard video first. The Primary Graphics setting should be set to onboard (it may be having issues with the auto setting.)

The drive with the OS should not be on the Asmedia controller.

I am not sure what the Green Drives have to do with this, but if you suspect as issue with these drives, put them on the AMD controller.

Yeah, primary graphics is set to onboard/integrated, but that just seems to convince it that something is wrong when a monitor isn't attached.

The OS drive isn't on the Asmedia controller, it is on one of the two ports from the SoC, along with a WD Red

I don't think the Greens are likely to be an issue, but I figured I'd throw in the detail, on the off chance it rang any bells for anyone. Also, on that front, one of them is a newer SATA3 green, the other is older SATA2.

The only old dGPUs I have are monsters that would probably fry my pico-PSU.

Thanks for the link, master_shake_ that looks simpler than I thought it would be. I'm going to look to see if I can find a cheap ready made version, but if I can't, that looks like a smaller project than troubleshooting this thing was.

 

[gagaboul]

I own that same model and I know there is an option in the bios to enable/disable the "boot failure guard" (BFG ..or something like that) feature that will reset to the defaults after 3 (default) failed boots.