M5110 Bios flash gone wrong. What to do?

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CaptainBonquers

New Member
Dec 11, 2018
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I accidentally bricked my raid card while flashing the bios. It's been lying around for some time, so I honestly don't remember whether it was just an update or a failed try to reflash it with an LSI bios.
I'm guessing that it will need the care of someone who is able to replace the bios chip, but wanted to ask here first.
 

BLinux

cat lover server enthusiast
Jul 7, 2016
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yeah, most of these LSI based cards are hard to really brick. the only time where I've had a really bricked card is when the flash chip fails and I'm not able to write the firmware to it. megarec should do the job, there's also another tool called lsirec. basically, these chips have a "host boot" function, allowing you to boot the chip with a firmware image on the host itself, so even if the firmware is corrupted, you can still boot the LSI controller from the host. once it is booted, you can communicate with it and program the flash so it can boot on its own.
 

Niklas P.

New Member
Aug 14, 2019
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yeah, most of these LSI based cards are hard to really brick. the only time where I've had a really bricked card is when the flash chip fails and I'm not able to write the firmware to it. megarec should do the job, there's also another tool called lsirec. basically, these chips have a "host boot" function, allowing you to boot the chip with a firmware image on the host itself, so even if the firmware is corrupted, you can still boot the LSI controller from the host. once it is booted, you can communicate with it and program the flash so it can boot on its own.
Can you explain the process of host firmware booting lsi cards? I'm curious how that's done.
 

nezach

Active Member
Oct 14, 2012
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Can you explain the process of host firmware booting lsi cards? I'm curious how that's done.
LSI's IOCs/ROCs can be implemented on a custom add-in card or integrated on motherboard or other product without the flash chip, where the firmware is usually located. In that case it needs to be initiated using the "host boot" mode, basically it boots directly from a firmware file; this is grossly oversimplified. See marcan/lsirec readme for a bit more details.