Some thoughts on the Pro 3400 MT

[BeemerBiker]

Bios:  My system has bios 7.15 and does not support UEFI.  I was wondering if the 7.16 bios supported it?  However,  even if it did, it is not possible to install that bios as it is a 4mbit and my motherboard only has 2mbit ROM.  Fortunately, nothing was damaged when I attempted to upgrade.  It is possible to save the bios with the command "safeuwin 7_15.ROM /o" 

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10/17/2021 11:20 PM 2,621,440 7_15.ROM
03/27/2012 03:14 PM 4,194,304 CUP_716.ROM
06/23/2011 09:49 AM 281,872 safuwin.exe

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Graphics Card Upgrade:  I was able to get my motherboard to handle a pair of AMD FirePro.  The S9050 (has video out) and the S9100 (no video out possible).  As shown in the photos I used risers.  One has to use risers as the cards are two wide to fit in the slots even if they were all X16

The system is running Boinc and will be mining for GRC crypto currency.  I will try adding two additional cards, all S9000 or S9050.  Note that I have a WiFi mini card.  It work fine.  The other sockets can also be used.  The board can take a pair of 8gb for a total of 16 but I dont need that much

I read were one can buy a socket to hold a 4Mbit ROM, replace the 2Mbit rom with the socket and then do a hot swap:  booting the 2Mbit and then replacing with the 4Mbit.  I have done this with older eprom but it is a pain to remove the ROM and solder a socket.  Question (I think I have to ask a question)  Does the 7.16 BIOS have UEFI?  That would allow newer GeForce cards to be used.

Pro 3400 setup on breadboardJust the momboWin7x64 with proof of pair of high end cards

[edit]  

I was able to put an S9000 in to the X16 slot and it worked without a riser.  It also worked on Mint 20.2  

Unfortunately, I never got a GeForce GTX 1060 to work.  The system only boots up if a non UEFI graphics card is used.  It will recognize the GTX 1060 but there is always a yellow bang on the driver.  I have not tried the 1060 in Mint but I assume the same problem.  Note that the displays, both above and below, show an UNCHECKED UEFI for the AMD cards.  Anyone interested in getting their Pro 3400 to work with a high end card might consider the S9000.  It has same GPU as the AMD HD-7950 and the fans on the 7950 fit on  the S9000 but MIGHT NOT FIT IN THE CASE as the GPU chip is closer to the front of the card than the 7950.  If you add a blower to the back of the S9000 it will definitely NOT fit in any case.  There is a mechanism named DUET  that might allow a UEFI card to be used on a Pro 3400 or cupertino motherboard.

GTX 1060 has yellow bang on driver

1060 on riser and not working!

[BeemerBiker]

WAS ABLE TO UPGRADE TO BIOS 7.16

Still, no hope for anyone wanting to use latest AMD or NVidia cards

I was mistaken about the 2Mbit rom size. While I was sold a Pro 3400 motherboard it was actually a Cupertino2. There seems to be a difference in the bios install.

The recommended Pro 3400 bios did not install after several tries. It was named sp59262
https://ftp.hp.com/pub/softpaq/sp59001-59500/sp59262.exe

After it failed to install I saved a copy of bios 7.15 using the command "safuwin 7_15.ROM /O"
The file is saved was larger than 2Mbit but far less than 4Mbit and I assumed incorrectly my programable ROM was not large enough.

The actual bios, 7_16, that worked was the cupertino bios sp58264
https://ftp.hp.com/pub/softpaq/sp58001-58500/sp58264.exe

I did a file compare and there is no binary difference between CUP_716.ROM in either service pack but, it seems that when executing spd58264.exe different parameters are used to cause the rom to be correctly installed.

I am running now 7.16 bios and there are a few differences. The is an option to "run a UEFI application" which does not seem to do anything. I thought it might ask me where the application was at a minimum. There is also an option to enable the onboard video. I assume that would allow me to use a second monitor. No other differences: I cannot use an AMD RX560 nor an NVidia GTX1060. Only cards that work are the non UEFI cards like the S9000, S9050. I bought several of those cards 3 years ago and paid about 200 each. I just checked on eBay and the S9050 is over $1000 USD!! In addition one must figure out a way to cool those cards as they are not designed for use with onboard fans.

I also discovered that my motherboard comes with a genuine HP Windows 7 Pro bios. Not sure if that license was in the 7.15 or showed up in the 7.16 I suspect that all Pro 3400s were licensed for Windows 7 anyway. In any event, I used the standard HP serial number for Windows 7 Pro to activate the motherboard. Since windows 10 is still free I am currently updating to windows 10.

[BIG EDIT]

Got windows 10 installed and activated at no cost other than finding the HP key to activate that old motherboard.

Also got an NVIdia GTX 1060 to work but but but:  The NVidia cannot be in the X16 slot AND there must be an additional GPU  that does not have a UEFI bios such as S9000, S9050, HD7950 etc . Anything pre 2011 seems ok.

The following pictures show activated Win10x64 with on-board Intel video (no monitor connected), ATI S9050 (similar to HD7950) on the X16 slot and GTX 1060 on an X1 riser and device manager shows all 3 working and the second monitor works find on the GTX 1060.

What I tried that didn't work

1 Set Primary "boot" video to onboard Intel with NVidia GTX 1060 in X16 slot:  BIOS kept changing .the boot primary video to the NVIdia card.  I suspect this would have worked if the BIOS had not changed the boot video back to the NVIdia. 

2 Set Primary boot video to NVidia with onboard intel video as second monitor:  Got black screen that I had to guess my password on to finally log in to windows but device manager didn't enable the gtx 1060 (it never worked)

3  NVidia in 1x riser and nothing in the X16 slot.  The problem here is the the bios disabled the onboard intel and selected the NVidia as boot video. Not only did this not work, it was not possible to re-enabled the on-board video (gtx1060 hung system) unless the ATI board was put back into the X16 slot although I suspect clearing the CMOS would put the video back in.  Normally when you enabled something in bios (serial ports, USB, etc) they stay enabled or disabled.  The PRO 3400 should have never disabled the onboard video because it "liked" the GTX better IMHO.

4 Put NVIdia in x16 and the AMD in x1.  Unfortunately, the BIOS insisted on setting the NVidia as the boot video which wont work.  If it had let the AMD be the boot then possibly the NVidia would have worked.  

Another thought:  I read that some Dell motherboards will not work with a non dell video board because the video board did not have a "dell certificate of secure boot"  The solution was to disable secure boot.  New versions of windows require secure boot so I am guessing that the NVidia has somthing that works with secure boot but the motherboard does not and (guesing) that old AMD card does not have secure boot certificate so it works OK with the pro 3400 but the gtx does not.

Following pictures show all 3 video devices working in win10x64 on HP Pro 3400

S9050 shows up as W8000: AMD bugCan chose which video to boot withShows AMD and NVidia working

note to myself:  If the bios is upgraded from 4mbit to 8mbit and flashed (with a programming device) then new video cards can be used.  details here 

[BeemerBiker · Accepted solution]

I was finally able to get my NVidia GTX-1060 to boot into windows 10 on my HP PRO 3400 from the x16 slot.

where I got the idea and pictures of the advanced bios page

[EDIT]  Also want to mention that this motherboard accepted a pair of 8gb PC3-12800 (double sided) ram to give me 16gb .

HP spec states 8 maximum which is incorrect.