wow! this forum makes my head spin! I both love and hate it at the same time
my journey started a year ago connecting an external GPU for my lenovo B40-30 and brought me here several times
sifting thru broken software tool links and incomplete guides related to my specific issue allowed me to discover some very cool advice and software goodies

I used some tools to expand my memory space and dsdt satisfaction by rerouting my pcie lanes disabling LAN card, sd card reader, webcam thru compaction
which initially was for the EGPU but it got me thinking later can I use it to drive a SSD as boot? sata ssd inside 2.5 sata case got a similiar speed to my 2.5 patriot burst
but when I found a ngff a/e key to m.2 adapter I installed a samsung 970 and then a 980 as boot running pcie 2.0 at 4x
a noticable speed bump for sure but the adapter is vertical shooting out the bottom of laptop plus blue screens later buit it was more of a test anywat
(thank god for amazon's generous return policy LOL)

next up, my lenovo thinkcentre M93p with I7-4790K paid $100 for and allmost had NVME support until I bricked it using a stupid suggestion from a neeb
and putting computer to sleep after flash erase using lenovo built in tool with the payload swapped out
luck would have it 5 minutes away I found 2 nearly new mobos picked up for $30 for both
got me a ch341a and now Im cooking with gasoline fellas! I managed to figure out M93p had two chips which when dumped and combined via hex tool created the full 12mb file with all regions
which uefi tool read like a champ and ubu modded me down to code 7 pre-life force sucking spectre/meltdown nonsense at got 30% back (kiss my ass lenovo and intel)
since evrytime I tried to sign up here to wait for an email activation that never came I had to turn to the russian community via translation which led me to a taiwonese gentlemen who
split the file for me 12mb into 8mb and 4mb along with the software and specific instructions for $20 (I paid $50 for my appreciation)
and now Im back again with login privledges! yay!

so my current obsession is my girlfriends alienware aurora R7 Z370 rig and installing my new 9700K Ive had almost a month now-It should be supported but No dell got greedy and released the aurora R8 which is the exact same mobo with a simple bios update!
my research now shows dells XPS8930 and inspiron gaming (forgot the model) are Z370 mobos were never marketed as 9th gen supported but low and behold out of the blue BOTH of them got a bios update for 9th gen support and the R8 got 3200hrz RAM upgrade! I have tried everything and searched high and low with no delll related hacks to be found
I started off using intel flashtool for bios dump which normally got me the bios only file without all the regions but this time it grabbed the whole 16mb dump (onlt one chip one this sucker)
it also allowed me to write it right back with no peksy bios write protection warning, green light go-I made the accertation I didnt need pin mod and cpuid code should be enough so using mmtool I replaced a single code with 906ec on some bad info as the 9700k is 906ED but regardless that one change bricked my mobo and thats after resisting tempation to run the coffeelake tool
it turns out the full "dump" was corrupted as I noticed when I flashed a real OEM file the ME would disapear from HWinfo so I thought it was "sleeping" and I had no original
but good ol dell has a restore feature lit right up and was back in the game to run it thru coffetime more false green light go and now an unrecoverable mobo
no worries I had a replacement oem flash chip already in the mail and my taiwonese friends took what I had and made me another bios but just before I recieved them I did something dumb
I merged the 2 oem xps-8930 bioses together and flashed the mobo with ch341a and it booted! no 9th gen of course but I know Im onto something

so is there anybody that can direct me on making this work? I have since re setup my tools and was going to correct the fit table, insert the codes again, attempt UBU manually but the machine works
now so I want to know for sure its worth a third attempt or did dell make it impossible? Im seeing that ME has to be downgraded but to what version? 11 just to be on safe side?
I did locate a cherry untainted full 16mb dump from an identical mobo (which Ill need to input mac/serial/ etc no clue how to do that) and I discovered a hidden partition with backup bios although it is 12mb just like the oem and I dont know how to glean the file for my mobo info-I am spent and exhausted fellas and I dont want to sound tackey but someone please take my donation
I even managed to procure an official dell coffelake SPI flashing manual and an enhanced firmware support tool for 300 series chipset along intels "cacheing" software which is pretty cool
as I tried to set up "smart response" and for a brief moment I had the intel cache software, RTS, optane, smart response AND a ram drive functioning at the same time but losing the only m.2 port to optane
obviously wasnt working but fun to play with anyway-sorry for the winded message just wanted to clarify my skills and hopefully contributions to the community as well as my pain which many of you can relate

thank you gentleman in advance for any support and for the hard work you provide the community all over the world-impressive to say the least


EDIT by Fernando: Thread title shortened and specified

and crickets? doesnt surprise me one bit-I cant be the only R7 owner and quite possibly the ONLY z370 mobo NOT supported for 9th gen cpu on this planet-
Is downgrading ME really neccessary for the z370 mobos? Ill check back here in a year for the answer-thanks

I'm having the same problem. If I find anything I'll let you know.
-justin

update-I guess its common knowledge that dell ami is quite difficult but more so time consuming to defeat the infamous to me now "BOOTGUARD"! feature
I wished someone would have chirped in or a page listing created with NO GOES or whatnot as I would never had attempted it
lostNbios was helping 2 people with exactly what I needed and just before final resolution(and instructions)
both of these idiots dropped off, did not follow lostnbios instructions to the letter and no solution revealed
I wonder if thats why lostnbios is on sabbatical? He pours his soul into both helping and educating people and they drop the ball
from what I gather which was verfied on this very forum (which needs to update its search feature by the way)
as I had searched for criteria pertaining to this and it was here the whole time-the NVAR needs to be modified
and each and every module pulled checked and uefi grub back in and change the varsettings

now that would be one hell of a bios tool

run a script to extract/process/translate the FIT/cross relate with a hex editor and there is your next killer app fellas
litterally pack ubu, uefi tool, FIT into a python shell which itself is scripted to install so when finished its off to boot to a linux UEFI kernal shell and start zapping varsettings
but uefi tool would need a "compare" feature upgrade and a translation matrix for the hex bios to text created but totally doable
I am also finding out that just adding cpuid codes alone will not get me 9th gen support so I bough the bullet and got an aurora R8 motherboard
for $100 (they go for $400 if you can find them) so now I will have 2 exact same mobos but at least 9th gen will work
on top of all that Dell released a bios update for the R7 yesterday after crickets for 1.5 years and it STILL doesnt offer 9th gen support!

anyways I would love a 2 second contribution to my situation
I would love to just replace dells twisted AMI version with a base intel/AMI version or COREBOOT this sucker

any luck on your end @jusleo ?

anybody?

mueller? mueller?