jmtd → log → Gigabyte J1900N-D3V Mini-ITX mainboard

For my 31^st birthday I decided to build myself a computer, specifically a NAS and backup server which could do some other bits and pieces. I ended up buying a system based on the Gigabyte J1900N-D3V SoC from Mini-ITX (who's after sales support is great, by the way).

I hope to write up a more comprehensive overview of what I've ended up with (probably in my rather dusty hardware section), but in the meantime I have a question for anyone else with this board:

If you've upgraded the BIOS, do the more recent BIOS versions insist on there being a display connected in order to boot?

Sadly the V1 BIOS version does, which seriously limits the utility of this board for my purposes. I did manage to flash the board up to V3, once, but it later decided to downgrade itself (believing the flashed BIOS to be corrupt). I haven't managed a second time. The EFI implementation in this board is... interesting. Convincing it to boot anything legacy is a tricky task.

As an aside, I recently stumbled across this suggestion on reddit to use an old-ish, Core-era Thinkpad T-series with a dock for this exact purpose: the spare ultrabay gives you two SATA drive slots; the laptop battery serves as a crude UPS and there's a built in keyboard and mouse, avoiding the issue I'm having with the J1900N-D3V. A Core i5 is more than fast enough for what I want to do and it will have vt. Hindsight is a wonderful thing...