Tyan Motherboard fails to POST

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joshenders

New Member
Jul 26, 2012
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Okay, progress. I got the board to POST.

I had a non-Ivy Bridge Xeon (Sandy Bridge E3-1220) overnighted and my assertion was correct, the shipping BIOS of V103 is incompatible with Ivy Bridge Xeons and the board POST'd fine with the Sandy Bridge Xeon installed. With the Sandy Bridge Xeon installed, I attempted to upgrade to V201 (the version that adds Ivy Bridge support) with afudos.exe from Tyan's website but got an error from afudos.exe that said, "ERROR: Rom file ROMID is not compatible with existing BIOS ROMID".

I checked the md5sum of the file S5510_v201/5510V201.ROM which is 5e8999fa3b68580e3ff3d2693ff1bad7 and got the same checksum on multiple downloads. I double checked my model number, and the url but I was definitely on the right page. At this point, I made the assumption that the error was a false positive and used the /X option to afudos.exe which overrides the ROMID check and forces the flash. Unfortunately, when I rebooted, the board emits a constant beep. I'm confident at this point the EEPROM is bricked.

I'll need to either get a replacement V201 EEPROM from Tyan or hotswap the EEPROM on another board with this socket to reflash it with V103.

Yesterday, the Tyan tech asked about a green sticker on the motherboard which I am assuming is an indicator of the PCB revision. My board doesn't have a green sticker, so it may be the case that what I have is a release board and the BIOS files on Tyan's site are only compatible with newer revisions of this model. This is only speculation but would explain why flashing a manufacturer provided BIOS file bricked my board.

All in all, I wish I had just bought a Super Micro board. Huge nightmare.
 
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mobilenvidia

Moderator
Sep 25, 2011
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New Zealand
Seems very poor management from Tyan.

How do you put an Ivy bridge CPU in a motherboard shipped with a Sandy only bridge BIOS, very strange.
Where did you get the Motherboard from ?
Tyan made BIOS v105 in April, your mobo must have been gathering dust for 3months +

Date Filename Version

2012/07/27 S5510_201b V2.01b

Description:

- Fix ASR-6805 + PCH Raid can't boot from Raid hdd drive


2012/05/22 S5510_v201 V2.01

Description:

- Modify ROM_ID for project check. I'm thinking you may have needed to update to v105 before going to v201 (just a guess)
- Add Ivy Bridge cpu support


2012/04/20 S5510_v105a V1.05a

Description:

- Support RTC WakeUp
- Support VGA Primary
At least the BIOS is on a chip in a socket, there is some hope for recovery.

Still extremely naff from Tyan lets hope they come to the party and get you sorted.


Had a look on ebay and this might be of interest:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Tyan-BIOS-C...ards_CPUs_CA&hash=item4168b3ccb8#ht_574wt_952
 
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joshenders

New Member
Jul 26, 2012
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mobilenvidia said:
- Modify ROM_ID for project check. I'm thinking you may have needed to update to v105 before going to v201 (just a guess)
If the BIOS revisions are just differential updates I could see why ordering would be important. In hindsight that would have been a safer approach especially after encountering that error message. If I can't get a V201 EEPROM directly from Tyan, I'll order another motherboard and do the hotswap trick to revive the bricked EEPROM. The board was purchased from Amazon.

Here are all of the releases for this board from their ftp site.

ftp://ftp.tyan.com/bios/ said:
S5510_v103.zip
S5510_v105.rar
S5510_v105a.rar
S5510_v200.rar
S5510_v201.rar
Hopefully somebody else in my same shoes will read this thread and never have to go through this trouble and expense.
 

john4200

New Member
Jan 1, 2011
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All in all, I wish I had just bought a Super Micro board. Huge nightmare.
I recently bought a Supermicro X9SCM-iiF (second revision of the X9SCM series), put in an Ivy Bridge Xeon, and have been running fine for a few weeks now.

I specifically got the X9SCM-iiF because I didn't want to accidently get an X9SCM-F with a pre-2.0 BIOS and not be able to use my Ivy Bridge Xeon CPU. But as time goes by, this issue may become less important as the old inventories of X9SCM-F are sold and the new ones ship with the 2.0+ BIOS.
 

Patrick

Administrator
Staff member
Dec 21, 2010
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That makes sense John.

I think the Tyan issue is the same as people have reported with the older batches of X9SCx boards.
 

john4200

New Member
Jan 1, 2011
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The other bad thing I have read about the Tyan board is that the IPMI web interface does not work if the computer is powered off. I'm not sure if it is true, and it sounds bizarre, but several newegg reviews mentioned it.
 

joshenders

New Member
Jul 26, 2012
13
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3
The 2x 82574L was one of the selling points for me when I bought this board. Apparently 82574LM is supported by OpenIndiana now so it's a moot point.

I also saw the Newegg reviews about IPMI problems while the machine was powered off. I remember reading a review that mentioned ipmitool still works as expected regardless of the machine's power status and since I plan on disabling the webif, this isn't a concern for me. Once I get this board up I'll let you know if I experience that problem.
 

Silhouette

New Member
Feb 13, 2012
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Hopefully somebody else in my same shoes will read this thread and never have to go through this trouble and expense.
Well your post saved me from bricking my bios chip, I was just minutes away from trying to force a bios update myself. Thanks :)

I see some mentions of having to contact tyan support to get a different flash software on the 5512 bios update page and also a google cached pdf (now deleted from their ftp) that seems to state that a jumper needs to be set and reset on the S5510 before and after the bios update.

I don't suppose anyone here has already done this and have the files needed as well as instructions on how to proceed?
 

allensm

New Member
Nov 23, 2012
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Marysville, WA
Has anyone found out how to get around the ROMID incompatibile problem without sending thet board back and waiting 6 weeks? I really don't want to wait that long for a solution.
 
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Silhouette

New Member
Feb 13, 2012
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Tyan will send you the necessary files if you contact their support and explain the problem. Well at least they sent me a pdf with instructions and the correct flash software after a couple of tries.