The HP T5740 has an AMI BIOS. Press F10 on power up to get into the BIOS screens. F12 brings up the boot options.
When I first went into the BIOS I got an initial prompt for a password. I ignored this and just hit the Enter key and ended up in the BIOS. I subsequently discovered that a password was set and without it I only had read-only access to the BIOS and so couldn't change anything. Briefly pulling the backup battery solved that problem.
For BIOS version(s) see the BIOS versions page.
It supports three boot devices (first, second and third) and these can be set to:
These are qualified by any hardware the BIOS finds:
For example, having plugged in a 1GB DOM that I had to hand the 'Hard Drive' entry then displayed as HDD:SM- 1024MB ATA. Adding a 60GB drive to the SATA interface did not change the boot options although it appeared as the secondary IDE device in the Standard CMOS features BIOS screen.
When the flash was removed leaving just the SATA drive the 'Hard Disk' boot option changed to HDD:3M-ST96812AS, the drive being a Seagate ST96812AS.
The Network Boot option displays as Network:MBA v12.2.0 Slot 0400.
I'm not sure exactly what range of USB devices are supported, but I plugged in an 8GB USB pen-drive that had Tinycore 5.2 on it and that booted and ran without any problems.
I couldn't find any entry in the BIOS to do with the display. Initially I used the VGA connector. Subsequently I bought a DisplayPort to DVI converter and tried out the DisplayPort output. I never got anything on the display. I've no idea why not.
My t5740 was running BIOS 786R8 v1.01 and I wanted to update it to the latest BIOS. The HP website (September 2017) seems to have taken several steps backwards. If you go to the website looking for updates it is currently reporting 'nothing'. Google helped me discover that at least 786R8 v1.04 existed and further searching told me that what I needed was sp52595.exe for the necessary files. Whether it was the last release of BIOS 786R8 I don't know. All I do know was that it made no difference to the problem I had with 32-bit PAE kernels that didn't use any installed memory above ~3GB.
In April 2016 I got an email from Igor Mayorov about enabling AHCI mode on the t5740. He has two t5740s and, as the chipset is capable of supporting AHCI mode, set about trying to use it. Normally it's just a matter of picking the right configuration option in the BIOS, but in the case of the t5740 there is no option.
He wrote:
I started tinkering about with AHCI mode. I tried to modify the BIOS and played with OptionROMs, but so far no luck. However it is possible to switch the SATA controller to AHCI mode via setpci command in GRUB. Confirmed working for any Linux, and as for now fails to work with XP.
lspci with VIDs/PIDs before switch:
00:1f.2 IDE interface[0101]: Intel Corporation 82801IBM/IEM (ICH9M/M-E) 2 port SATA Controller [IDE mode] [8086:2928](rev 03) 00:1f.5 IDE interface[0101]: Intel Corporation 82801IBM/IEM (ICH9M/M-E) 2 port SATA Controller [IDE mode] [8086:292d](rev 03)Run the two commands:
setpci -s 00:1f.2 90.b=40 setpci -s 00:1f.5 90.b=40lspci with VIDs/PIDs after switch:
00:1f.2 will become 8086:2929
00:1f.5 will become 8086:292fSATA port assignment
00:1f.2 0-Primary master - Not soldered SATA port near DOM IDE, could be soldered
00:1f.2 1-Secondary master - DOM IDE connector via JMICRON SATA to IDE controller00:1f.5 0-Primary master - SATA header near Mini PCI-E
00:1f.5 1-Secondary master - No traces from southbridge, no way to solder
Mine came with no flash. The HP support pages offer:
For the t5745 it is: