5/28/2020 Gigabyte Brix Gb-bace-3000 Enter Bios
Jun 04, 2014 Sounds a very stupid question, isn't it? I've got a Gigabyte Brix, a mini-ITX barebone with everything including but RAM and HDD. I turned it on for the first time, set the BIOS as I wanted (essentially changing data and time), stuck a USB drive with a Windows image in it, rebooted and.BIOS. Jun 16, 2016 Solved I cant get into the Bios of a Gigabyte GB-BSi7H-6500. Deeb June 16, 2016 at 06:40:34 Specs: Windows 64. This Brix isnt backwards compatable with USB 2.0 - which all wired keyboards are- so I cannot get into the BIOS (press delete) in order to install an OS from a USB3 source because I cannot install the Gigabyte driver.
![]() Or, how to break the ultra-fast boot prison![]()
The Gigabyte BRIX is a nice little Intel NUC-like tiny form-factor piece of
hardware. The one I have is a little bit of an older model (GB-BXA8-5557 [1]) and has an AMD A8-5557M integrated CPU and graphics processor with 4 cores and 8GB RAM. It looks like this:
Recently, I wanted to re-image a Gigabyte BRIX machine for use as a MaaS rack
controller. The OS I had on there was Xubuntu 15.10 and I wanted to lay down a brand new Ubuntu Desktop 18.04 image on it and start fresh.
Normally, the process of doing this is quite simple: burn the new operating
system image to a USB drive, place the USB drive in one of the USB ports on the BRIX, and power-cycle. You should be able to hit the Delete key on powercycle to tell the BRIX to enter the BIOS, at which point you can change the boot order and set the USB drive to boot first.
In fact, this is how I remembered doing things the first time I set up the
BRIX. However, this time when I went to power cycle the hardware, the machine would boot so quickly that it was impossible for me to enter the BIOS in order to set the USB drive as the first boot (and therefore get to my new Ubuntu install ISO).
Well, it turns out that at some point in the past couple years, I had (for some
unknown reason) toggled the ultra-fast boot option for the BRIX. I’m not sure how or when I did this, and apparently it is a UEFI feature, not a BIOS feature, but either way, the ultra-fast boot option essentially disabled my ability to get to the BIOS at all and change the boot order. Consequently, after about fifteen different frustrating attempts to hit the Delete key fastenough on power cycle, I gave up and hit the Internets looking for a solution to the “Can’t get Gigabyte BRIX to display BIOS menu” problem.
Turns out that it’s not possible to disable the ultra-fast boot option (in
Linux at least). You have to physically reset the non-volatile BIOS memory.
The BIOS memory is typically stored in something called “complementary
metal–oxide–semiconductor”, or CMOS.
The CMOS allows a (very) small amount of data to be persisted even when power is
pulled from the circuitboard. However, in order to preserve this persistent data, the CMOS uses a battery. In order to “reset the CMOS”, you need to locate this battery and remove it temporarily, which will cause the persistent data to be reset to factory defaults.
This is a lot more involved than I had hoped, but I accomplished it and am
happy to report that my Gigabyte BRIX is now running on Ubuntu 18.04 after I was able to get into the BIOS and change the boot order after resetting the CMOS battery.
Since I was pretty frustrated at the lack of documentation (on both the
Gigabyte website as well as the Internet at large), I decided to write an article about how to reset the CMOS battery on this particular hardware. Here are the steps to take, along with pictures showing the actions to take and the location of important bits. Step 1: Remove outer shell
First things first, you will of course want to disconnect all auxiliary
connectors as well as the main power cord.
Once you’ve disconnected everything attaching the BRIX to anything else
(including the power outlet), flip the little BRIX on its top, which will expose the bottom of the outer casing. This outer casing will have four black screws holding the shell to the inner casing. Remove all four screws.
Once you’ve removed the four screws, lift the bottom shell plate away from the
case. The bottom shell plate will most likely house an SSD drive along with the drive connector to the motherboard. You should be able to gently set the bottom plate to the side of the casing.
Once you’ve placed the bottom plate next to the case, remove the rear metal
panel by simply sliding it upwards. This will expose the side of the main circuitboard which you will be removing shortly. Step 2: Remove circuitboard
Next, you will need to remove the circuitboard from the inner casing. The CMOS
battery that we will be temporarily disconnecting is on the underside of the primary circuitboard (motherboard). In order to remove this circuitboard, there is a single screw on the right side of the circuitboard, as shown in the following picture. Unscrew this screw and place to the side.
Note that there are two wires labeled “main” and “aux” going into one of the
components on the top side of the circuitboard:
while you can complete the reset without detaching these wires, it’s a little
tricky, so you can just gently pop each of those wires off before you slide the primary circuitboard out.
Once the one screw is removed and you’ve detached the “main” and “aux” wires,
you will want to gently wiggle the circuitboard upwards and towards you. Step 3: Disconnect the CMOS battery
Once you’ve remove the primary circuitboard, turn it over and you will see the
bright yellow CMOS battery. Disconnect the tiny CMOS battery connector by gently squeezing the inside of the connector and lifting.
Next, wait around 2-3 minutes. I have no idea on exactly how long one should
wait for the CMOS to be reset, but most things I found on the web indicate a couple minutes or more. Step 4: Reattach and reassemble the hardware
Finally, go ahead and reassemble/reattach everything you’ve just disconnected. In order:
Afterwards, you should be able to power on your BRIX, hit the
Delete keyduring power on and see the BIOS menu where you can change the boot order of your machine!
[1]
The newest similar BRIX model with an AMD A8 processor is the GB-BXA8-5545. I have no idea why the newer model has a lower model number (5545 vs my older 5557) but you’d have to ask Gigabyte about that. ![]() Comments are closed.
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