This motherboard will be used in the Aiolos Project and so it has to run FreeBSD. Sound and graphics are not required for this specific use, but of course I set out to find whether the board is usable for a FreeBSD desktop.
Before purchasing the motherboard, I searched the Internet on FreeBSD and Bay Trail. And sure enough, I found a post of someone that has successfully installed FreeBSD on the very similar Q1900-ITX. And while FreeBSD 9.2-RELEASE needed extra patches to work with it, it seemed 10.1-RELEASE would need no extra work.
After performing the initial base install (without a hitch), I tried playing an mp3 file with mplayer. The sound card was recognized by the system:
cat /dev/sndstat
Installed devices:
pcm0: <Realtek ALC662 (Analog)> (play/rec) default
pcm1: <Realtek ALC662 (Analog)> (play/rec)
pcm2: <Realtek ALC662 (Front Analog Headphones)> (play)
pcm3: <Intel (0x2882) (HDMI/DP 8ch)> (play)
However, mplayer would not play:
Audio device got stuck!
I tried changing the default sound device from pcm0 to pcm1 and pcm2 to no avail. But then I discovered this post with an interesting sysctl:
dev.hdac.0.polling=1
For sound to work, the following two commands have to be executed (as root):
sysctl dev.hdac.0.polling=1
sysctl hw.snd.default_unit=1
For the settings to persist across reboots, enter the following lines in /etc/sysctl.conf:
dev.hdac.0.polling=1
hw.snd.default_unit=1
This solves the sound problem once and for all!
Xorg Configuration
No matter what I tried, Xorg will only run in VESA mode. Using the current Intel driver (xf86-video-intel-2.21.15_5) in xorg.conf will give you a blank screen and unresponsive system. Running startx without a pre-generated xorg.conf file will use the VESA driver. I hope this will be fixed with a later version of the driver. Current linux distros have no problems with either sound or video on this board. And since you may ask, both Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 perform very well on the Q1900b-ITX.
Happy New Year and happy FreeBSDing too!
