From owner-freebsd-hardware@FreeBSD.ORG  Mon Jun 12 14:00:12 2006
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From: Patrick Proniewski <patpro@patpro.net>
Date: Mon, 12 Jun 2006 16:00:08 +0200
To: John Baldwin <jhb@freebsd.org>
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Cc: freebsd-hardware@freebsd.org
Subject: Re: i386 EFI motherboard and FreeBSD 6
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On 12 juin 06, at 15:04, John Baldwin wrote:

>> I'm thinking about buying an Intel motherboard with Xeon LV
>> (Sossaman) to run FreeBSD. This board uses EFI instead of "regular"
>> BIOS. Is it possible to boot FreeBSD 6 for i386 (sossaman is 32 bits
>> proc.) on an EFI based motherboard ?
>
> FreeBSD/i386 doesn't support EFI yet, only FreeBSD/ia64 does.  Are  
> you sure
> the motherboard requires EFI and doesn't also provide a BIOS  
> interface of
> some sort (perhaps on top of EFI)?  If it does that, then FreeBSD/ 
> i386 will
> boot fine using the BIOS interface.


Well, in fact I'm not sure, the documentation for motherboard  
SE7520BB2D2 mentions both BIOS and EFI, and I was not aware one could  
mix both on a motherboard. I've just asked the support at Intel about  
the Bios/EFI mix.
Intel lists the following OSes in the compatibility chart for this  
motherboard:

Microsoft Windows* Server 2003
(Standard & Enterprise versions with SP1)
IA-32 bit version only                       Compatibility & Stress

RedHat* Linux Enterprise 4 (latest update)
IA-32 bit only                               Compatibility & Stress

RedHat* Enterprise Linux 3 (latest update)
IA-32 bit only                               Install Only

SuSE* Enterprise Linux 9 (latest update)
IA-32 bit only                               Compatibility & Stress

Novell NetWare* 6.5 (latest update)          Install Only

patpro