Options for Windows-on-ARM development box?

Greetings to all. Returned to the Windows kernel, after a long affair with other things.
Looking for affordable development machine for ARM64 and stumbled upon "Windows Dev Kit 2023" - but it is permanently out of stock in the MS store.
Besides, boss says that it is now obsolete because Qualcomm has now a better chip.
Is the "Dev Kit 2023" still valid as a test box for Win11 if I don't need the latest chip, Gen5+ wireless, fancy display?

Did you have a specific need for that form factor? There are a number of Snapdragon X based laptops on the market now. Unfortunately there is not much for desktop PCs available yet.

Not locked at this form factor. But I've used a Mac Mini for OS/X work and liked it. Especially the price. I don't need battery and built-in LCD so why pay for them? Would like ability to disable secure boot and tweak the UEFI.

We use a Microsoft Surface Laptop 7th gen. Fantastic laptop, see here.

The Windows Dev Kit would have a much slower processor probably good enough for testing but not really for development (unless you like slow performance).

There are some really good Black Friday deals from Microsoft for this laptop.

I have tried using Windows 11 ARM laptop Lenovo Thinkpad x13 for driver and ACPI BIOS development. I had trouble disabling the Secure Boot. require entering Bit-Locker Key every time we make the changes to System BIOS ACPI table. Also, ACPI changes do not take effect and not reflected in the device manager.
I switched to using Windows 10 Arm IoT platform for testing the ACPI changes.
Question is do we need a Special Windows BKC image for Windows Arm system to tweak the UEFI ACPI BIOS table?

Yes, testing is this is what I really mean. Build on a decent x64 machine.

Looks like the MS Dev Kit and the Qualcomm Snapdragon Dev Kit are gone for good.

Most likely only laptops are available at this point in time.

For the records: You can disable Secure Boot on the MS Surface Laptop 7th gen. You should disable Bitlocker before you do this to avoid the recovery key input.

Note: This is a general Bitlocker security precautionary measure which happens on any Windows computer.

1 Like

Thank you. If secure boot can be reliably disabled, it can work for me. All that is left is convince the customer to buy it ))

Advantech has a Windows 10 IoT on ARM Dev. Kit if this helps:

EPC-R3720 Windows 10 on Arm Dev. Kit (NXP i.MX8M Plus Cortex-A53 Embedded PC)

or you can request early access for ROM-DK2860 (Qualcomm QCS6490 OSM Board) Windows 11 on ARM Dev. Kit.

I'm using the Windows ARM IoT Platform EPC-R3720. This is a Windows IoT Enterprise OS, we have limited development tools and support. I was trying to install python libraries for win32 test development, I did see compatible python lib.

1 Like

Do you know the price of it? On the Advantech (manufacturer) site they ask to fill a quotation request.
Can it run a normal (not the IoT) Windows 11? If I understand correctly, Win11 IoT requires some special sort of license, after 90-days evaluation.

The EPC-R3720 we got it as part of winning Raffle when we filled up the contact form on Advantech web site. You should go ahead and submit a quote request.
Installing Windows 11 should be allowed but we have not tried out.

1 Like