Intel DQ67SW

The Intel DQ67SW is a microATX-sized desktop board for Intel Sandy Bridge CPUs.

Technology

Northbridge Intel Sandy Bridge-specific documentation
Southbridge Intel Q67 (bd82x6x)
CPU socket LGA 1155
RAM 4 x DDR3-1333
Super I/O Nuvoton/Winbond W83677HG-i
Audio Realtek ALC888S
Network Intel 82579LM Gigabit Ethernet
Serial Internal header

Status

Working

  • Sandy Bridge and Ivy Bridge CPUs (tested: i5-2500, Pentium G2120)
  • Native RAM initialization with four DIMMs
  • Integrated GPU with libgfxinit
  • PCIe graphics in the PEG slot
  • Additional PCIe slots
  • PCI slot
  • All rear (4x) and internal (8x) USB2 ports
  • Rear USB3 ports (2x)
  • All four internal SATA ports (two 6 Gb/s, two 3 Gb/s)
  • Two rear eSATA connectors (3 Gb/s)
  • SATA at 6 Gb/s
  • Gigabit Ethernet
  • SeaBIOS 1.16.1 + libgfxinit (legacy VGA) to boot slackware64 (Linux 5.15)
  • SeaBIOS 1.16.1 + extracted VGA BIOS to boot Windows 10 (21H2)
  • edk2 UefiPayload (uefipayload_202207) + libgfxinit (high-res) to boot:
    • slackware64 (Linux 5.15)
    • Windows 10 (22H2)
  • External in-circuit flashing with flashrom-1.2 and a Raspberry Pi 1
  • Poweroff
  • Resume from S3
  • Console output on the serial port

Not working

  • Automatic fan control. One can still use OS-based fan control programs, such as fancontrol on Linux or SpeedFan on Windows.
  • Windows 10 booted from SeaBIOS + libgfxinit (high-res). The installation works, but once Windows Update installs drivers, it crashes and enters a bootloop.

Untested

  • Firewire (LSI L-FW3227-100)
  • EHCI debug
  • S/PDIF audio
  • Audio jacks other than the green one

Flashing coreboot

Type Value
Socketed flash no
Model W25Q64.V
Size 8 MiB
Package SOIC-8
Write protection yes
Dual BIOS feature no
Internal flashing see below
In circuit flashing see below

The flash is divided into the following regions, as obtained with ifdtool -f rom.layout backup.rom:

00000000:00000fff fd
00580000:007fffff bios
00003000:0057ffff me
00001000:00002fff gbe

Unfortunately the SPI interface to the chip is locked down by the vendor firmware. The BIOS Lock Enable (BLE) bit of the BIOS_CNTL register, part of the PCI configuration space of the LPC Interface Bridge, is set.

It is possible to program the chip is to attach an external programmer with an SOIC-8 clip.

Another way is to boot the vendor firmware in UEFI mode and exploit the unpatched S3 Boot Script vulnerability. See this page for a similar procedure: Ivy Bridge Lenovo ThinkPad Internal Flashing.

On this specific board it is possible to prevent the BLE bit from being set when it resumes from S3. One entry in the S3 Boot Script must be modified, e.g. with a patched version of CHIPSEC that supports this specific type of S3 Boot Script, for example from strobo5:

$ git clone -b headerless https://github.com/strobo5/chipsec.git
$ cd chipsec
$ python setup.py build_ext -i
$ sudo python chipsec_main.py -m tools.uefi.s3script_modify -a replace_op,mmio_wr,0xe00f80dc,0x00,1

The boot script contains an entry that writes 0x02 to memory at address 0xe00f80dc. This address points at the PCIe configuration register at offset 0xdc for the PCIe device 0:1f.0, which is the BIOS Control Register of the LPC Interface Bridge [0][1]. The value 0x02 sets the BLE bit, and the modification prevents this by making it write a 0 instead.

After suspending and resuming the board, the BIOS region can be flashed with a coreboot image, e.g. using flashrom. Note that the ME region is not readable, so the –noverify-all flag is necessary. Please refer to the Flashing firmware tutorial.

Hardware monitoring and fan control

Currently there is no automatic, OS-independent fan control.

Serial port header

Serial port 1, provided by the Super I/O, is exposed on a pin header. The RS-232 signals are assigned to the header so that its pin numbers map directly to the pin numbers of a DE-9 connector. If your serial port doesn’t seem to work, check if your bracket expects a different assignment.

Here is a top view of the serial port header found on this board:

             +---+---+
         N/C |   | 9 | RI  -> pin 9
             +---+---+
Pin 8 <- CTS | 8 | 7 | RTS -> pin 7
             +---+---+
Pin 6 <- DSR | 6 | 5 | GND -> pin 5
             +---+---+
Pin 4 <- DTR | 4 | 3 | TxD -> pin 3
             +---+---+
Pin 2 <- RxD | 2 | 1 | DCD -> pin 1
             +---+---+

References

[0]: Intel 6 Series Chipset and Intel C200 Series Chipset Datasheet, May 2011, Document number 324645-006

[1]: Accessing PCI Express Configuration Registers Using Intel Chipsets, December 2008, Document number 321090