[PLUG] Intel D865PERL motherboard...

[Michael Christopher Robinson]

It is updated to the last bios that Intel made for it.  Trouble is, 
the board does not POST if I plug any SATA drives in.  I have two 
SSDs that are SATA.  I'm running what Intel calls release 21 of 
their BIOS.  The BIOS is probably to blame.  Is there any open 
source replacement for the Intel bios that works?  Does anyone 
know if the BIOS can be downgraded and what version I should 
downgrade to?

A problem I'm having, I need to run Windows 7 or maybe even 98se, 
for software that doesn't work in other environments.  Think XID 
and possibly some other old programs.  My druthers is to install
Linux and wine, but I'm stuck using an IDE hard drive and a small 
one at that if I can't use the onboard SATA.

I could use a version of Windows that doesn't require activation,
talk about ancient garbage though.  Changing the motherboard from
an ASUS P4P800SE to an Intel D865PERL, I have a Windows 7 is not 
legit error that I can't easily get rid of.  Suppose I'll have to 
call Microsoft tomorrow.  The old motherboard is going to the 
recycler, I'm not trying to run this copy on multiple machines 
and I'm not a pirate.  Microsoft's business model is wrong.  
Treating your customers like they are pirates will only drive 
people to free software in the long run.  If Microsoft had 
real competition in the pay for software world, maybe 
Microsoft's prices would be lower.  Instead, Microsoft is
on the cusp of leasing instead of selling software, think
Microsoft Office 360.

I could use the D865PERL as a Linux server if I could get the 
onboard SATA working.  It would replace a K6-2 500 with 
Slackware 14.1 on it.  It would be substantially more powerful, 
but not 64 bit.  I couldn't run FreeNAS 11 on it.  A problem is
figuring out if the Core2Duo system I built for Dad can emulate 
Windows 98SE on top of Windows 10 for XID and possibly some 
other programs that need an old version of Windows.