Humor, I accidentally sent an empty reply, newbe...... Putting in the content now.
So thanks to grxlab and his pointer to the quanta site. I happen to have the Quanta version of the server (bought from Essio) and I was successful in updating the bios which then enables installing Windows Server 2016 TP4.
A couple of notes, links:
The bios version was a little hard to find, wasn't 100% sure of which version of the machine I had and the website had two different variants. F03A and F03C. From my bios I seemed to have F03B......
Looking at the readme.txt's that were in each download I noticed that the F03C's readme had the following text
"System hardware revision supported: F03B PVT board."
Taking a chance, I took the dos install option and was able to do the firmware update(s). (There is actually two, one for the bios and one for the "ME Firmware".)
After that, there was a new bios experience and it supports installing modern OS's.
Link to the bios/drivers/etc.
Download Center
Hope this helps others, appreciate the thread and it is nice to see such an affordable solution for home lab expansion.
![Smile :) :)](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7)