H12SSL-I Stuck at "bmc initiating"

[RageBone]

Tried to recover a H11ssl BMC yesterday by trying to flash a stock image from SM.
I think that lost the BMC-NIC MAC and the thing didn't have networking anymore.

If you were to do that, i think that at least that would make the wait for BMC happy if that is the issue.
Though i also think that it should time out after a while and continue anyway, so it is weird that that isn't happeneing as well.

Luckily, i had a backup and could flash that back in my case.
Sadly, the H11 BMC FW is different enough to the X10 and X11 series for me to not be able to reset that to factory settings manually.
H12 FW is different yet again, so, good luck with i guess?

In my opinion, an external SPI eeprom flasher is your only option at this point.
Get one with with SOP8 and SOP16 clips and the 1.8V Level shifter, and take a Multimeter to the EEPROMS and measure their voltage to make sure you arre using the right combo.
You could either flash the BMC FW to stock and hope that makes the wait feature happy.
Or you modify a bios to not wait by default, and then flash that.
Other ideas?

 

[Dick Lee]

In my opinion, an external SPI eeprom flasher is your only option at this point.

Good idea! But can this be done with the presence of the cluster of peripheral circuits?

 

[PeterF]

I'll take this as the last resort. Is there any other way to reset, reflash BMC? I guess toys like Supermicro IPMI SIMLP-3+ are not usefull in this scenario?

There is an UID button close to the VGA port. I think there have been reports that this can get stuck and cause a problem like yours.
It can get stuck when the MB is inserted in the chassis or a pci card is inserted or taken out.
BR
Peter

 

[RolloZ170]

Or you modify a bios to not wait by default, and then flash that.
Other ideas?

modded BIOS does NOT work at H12/X12 for security reasons.
i tried to flash a X12SPL BIOS with ch341a, the LEDs of the board lighten up and the USB port dropped.
don't know if its same on H12. for that reason its most easy on a board with no warranty to swap the flash chips if you can.

 

[RolloZ170]

Good idea! But can this be done with the presence of the cluster of peripheral circuits?

do i see a blown up chip there ?

 

[RolloZ170]

these are your FW chips

 

[Dick Lee]

There is an UID button close to the VGA port. I think there have been reports that this can get stuck and cause a problem like yours.
It can get stuck when the MB is inserted in the chassis or a pci card is inserted or taken out.

I really hope you are right! I'll test the mb again later, fingers crossed!

 

[Dick Lee]

these are your FW chips
View attachment 25270

Thank you very much for correcting my misunderstanding - I thought the ast2500 was the one!

 

[RolloZ170]

I thought the ast2500 was the one!

this is the BMC controller with ARM core itself.

 

[RageBone]

Oh nooo, i spot something i don't like at all.
Please take a closeup picture of all of those and post it here.

 

[Dick Lee]

Oh nooo, i spot something i don't like at all.
Please take a closeup picture of all of those and post it here.

Here it is.

 

[Dick Lee]

There is an UID button close to the VGA port. I think there have been reports that this can get stuck and cause a problem like yours.
It can get stuck when the MB is inserted in the chassis or a pci card is inserted or taken out.
BR
Peter

No luck. I installed it in another case, used another psu, 1 stick of ram, 1 gpu & nothing else, still the same story - the cpu fan span at high speed once I powered on the psu.

 

[RageBone]

Here it is.View attachment 25389

that picture is sadly not good enough, to really make it out.
But U4 looks uniform and fine, U6 does not look uniform but with a bit of dust / grime, i think that one might still be ok.

U5 is in my opinion very likely dead and splintered.
Those are bare unprotected silicon wafer chips on a few solder-balls tasked with converting voltages for the BMC from 3.3VSB, called Buck-Converter.

If one of those voltages is missing,the BMC can't fulfill its job and to me, that it still can blink is luck.
I have a H12DSi with which that happened, but it killed the BMC by giving it 3.3V instead.

You can make sure of what i say by measuring the black inductors of the Buck-converters.
i have marked all three of them and where you can measure the voltage in this picture.
Please measure the voltages on all 3 and i hope for you that they all have some voltage on them.
I suspect the middle one for U5 to measure 0V.

 

[RolloZ170]

again: what about this chip ? markings or blowup mark ?

 

[Dick Lee]

Tried to recover a H11ssl BMC yesterday by trying to flash a stock image from SM.
I think that lost the BMC-NIC MAC and the thing didn't have networking anymore.

If you were to do that, i think that at least that would make the wait for BMC happy if that is the issue.
Though i also think that it should time out after a while and continue anyway, so it is weird that that isn't happeneing as well.

Luckily, i had a backup and could flash that back in my case.
Sadly, the H11 BMC FW is different enough to the X10 and X11 series for me to not be able to reset that to factory settings manually.
H12 FW is different yet again, so, good luck with i guess?

In my opinion, an external SPI eeprom flasher is your only option at this point.
Get one with with SOP8 and SOP16 clips and the 1.8V Level shifter, and take a Multimeter to the EEPROMS and measure their voltage to make sure you arre using the right combo.
You could either flash the BMC FW to stock and hope that makes the wait feature happy.
Or you modify a bios to not wait by default, and then flash that.
Other ideas?

I just bought the kit for flashing. The seller could not tell me which color is 1. Could you tell me which one is 1?

 

[RolloZ170]

what about the damaged parts ?

 

[null224]

OP did you ever get it sorted out? Having the same issue.

 

[null224]

that picture is sadly not good enough, to really make it out.
But U4 looks uniform and fine, U6 does not look uniform but with a bit of dust / grime, i think that one might still be ok.

U5 is in my opinion very likely dead and splintered.
Those are bare unprotected silicon wafer chips on a few solder-balls tasked with converting voltages for the BMC from 3.3VSB, called Buck-Converter.

If one of those voltages is missing,the BMC can't fulfill its job and to me, that it still can blink is luck.
I have a H12DSi with which that happened, but it killed the BMC by giving it 3.3V instead.

You can make sure of what i say by measuring the black inductors of the Buck-converters.
i have marked all three of them and where you can measure the voltage in this picture.
Please measure the voltages on all 3 and i hope for you that they all have some voltage on them.
I suspect the middle one for U5 to measure 0V.

I'm not seeing a part number on these. Should the voltage be the same on all 3? I'm getting 1.2v on the top one then 30mv on the other 2. Is there a way of disabling the BMC?

 

[Dick Lee]

Not yet, still trying to figure out how to flash the chip. Since I got a tyan s8030 to replace it, ther's no rush.

 

[oneplane]

Keep in mind that you can't use the files you download for a 'normal' update, those are intended to be read by a BIOS program, not to be stored on flash memory. You need a raw dump for that. As a result, you'll also get the MAC and UUIDs from a raw dump, so you may need to change those.

Besides that, what about the burn mark on that part?

Also: if you see text on your screen, that's the BIOS, not the BMC. The BIOS does try to talk to the BMC, so any text about the BMC is about that, not the other way around.