HP P410 controller failure

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stamasd

Member
May 30, 2020
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I'm trying to make this P410 work, but it behaves strangely. I must say I'm not using HP hardware to test it, but rather a Dell motherboard.

When I use the card with the cache module and battery attached, it gives me a failure message and doesn't go any further. The boot does not complete.


After I power it off and then on again, the same thing happens, same message and no boot.

If I detach the cache+battery it seems to initialize for a few seconds, but then reboots, shows the same message again, reboots etc.



powering off and on again just restarts the whole cycle without any change.

If I attach the cache+battery back, it goes back to the first behavior with the failure message.

This is the card, with cache detached


Is there anything I can do at this point to make it work?
 

ecosse

Active Member
Jul 2, 2013
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With another HP card (H240) on non HPE hardware I needed to disable the boot BIOS for the card on the motherboard PCI-E configuration - otherwise the server hung. So you can't do anything in the boot up but you could use the OS array management tools once booted. Not ideal.

Doesnt seem to be your issue but might be worth a try.
 

stamasd

Member
May 30, 2020
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Interesting. A H240 happens to be the card that I normally use in the system I'm testing with, and it works fine without any BIOS tricks. In fact I just looked, I don't have an option in the BIOS to disable card boot ROMs.
 
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ecosse

Active Member
Jul 2, 2013
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Oh well, that was my experience on an intel board - s2600cp2. You are right though there were other boards where I didn't need to do that. Sorry that was my best idea - other than try to firmware flash it again if you can.
 

Jason Antes

Active Member
Feb 28, 2020
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Might check into the SMBIOS pin issue. I ran into this trying to run these in non-server computers where it would just endlessly cycle through initialization.

Otherwise, it may be that the controller and/or the cache card is junk. If the battery were dead it would just say that or if the module was not supported.
 

stamasd

Member
May 30, 2020
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Interesting, worth a try. I happen to have a roll of kapton tape and a razor blade right next to the card, hmm. :)
 

stamasd

Member
May 30, 2020
38
10
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Interesting behavior. With those 2 pins masked, and the cache module attached, there is no boot message from the card; the system boots normally but the card is not seen at all by the kernel. A lspci does not show it. It's like the card was not even present. The lights on the card blink as usual, so it's getting power for sure.
With the pins taped and the cache module detached, there is no change in the previous behavior. It seems to initialize at boot, then reboots and so on in an infinite reboot loop.
 

Jason Antes

Active Member
Feb 28, 2020
224
76
28
Twin Cities
Without being able to try it in a server, it's hard to know if it's the card or the system at this point. Do you have a different system to try it in?
 

stamasd

Member
May 30, 2020
38
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Well I took one of the other systems offline this morning and tested the card in it. Either with or without the cache attached the card is not seen at boot at all, and not listed with lspci.
I guess I'll toss it in my pile of "questionable" hardware - which unfortunately is quite big.