Accessing MegaRAID BIOS (WebBIOS, Ctrl-H) on consumer motherboards

Greetings,

            It's been a while I'm using LSI Logic 9260-4i RAID controller in a mini-ITX motherboard, in my case it is ASUS P8H67-I. What's bug you most when you plan a setup like this is "is my RAID card going to initialize properly?", as most consumer boards assume you'll put some graphics card in them, and won't even consider a scenario above.
            Good news is that when I've started this setup two years ago, it worked like a charm. I was able to get into WebBIOS just by pressing Ctrl-H, and everything worked like it should. This, however, changed as soon as I've upgraded firmware on the MegaRAID - pressing Ctrl-H yielded nothing, the system continued to boot without any sign of WebBIOS appearing.

             This happens because what MegaRAID BIOS actually does when you press Ctrl-H is it inserts a virtual CD-ROM image with WebBIOS into a boot order chain, and attempts to make it a primary boot media. However, as standard mobo BIOS assumes that all the devices has been already initialized and boot order determined, this attempt goes unnoticed by it.
            There are basically two workarounds for this problem I'm aware of. Which one would work for you depends on mobo BIOS/MegaRAID BIOS combination you have, and some peculiarities of boot order in your case.
            First one is to hit Del (or F10, whatever key is used to enter BIOS Setup) before MegaRAID BIOS starts initializing, then when prompted hit Ctrl-H. This worked for me quite well up until either main BIOS or MegaRAID firmware update eliminated this possibility via very early RAID BIOS init.
            The second workaround is to wait until MegaRAID initialize, press Ctrl-H when prompted, and immediately after this start rapidly pressing F8 (or whatever key is used to bring up boot media selection in your case). When boot menu appears you should see something similar to "RAID card CD-ROM" in the options list - this is what you're looking for to get into WebBIOS.
            One thing to note is that this behavior depends on your boot controller order. If you fail to enter WebBIOS by any means above, you should check to see if RAID card is set as your primary boot device.

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