12Gb/s ServeRAID M5210 SAS/SATA Controller - $135.40

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DaSaint

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Oct 3, 2015
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Not firing in my C6100 either... I guess we wait and see on the others if they have any better luck

Tyan or Supermicro no dice as well

I will also admit the packaging that was done was poorly in a envelope bubble with no protection...
 
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cptbjorn

Member
Aug 16, 2013
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What errors are folks getting and how long did you give it? Maybe just a glacially slow IBM boot?
 

DaSaint

Active Member
Oct 3, 2015
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Sorry i meant to say the system will post however the card will not post its bios information

I have not blocked off the pins yet.
 

DaSaint

Active Member
Oct 3, 2015
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Negative... it could also be a dud too so i guess we will wait and see what the others get out of theirs...
 

Patriot

Moderator
Apr 18, 2011
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Negative... it could also be a dud too so i guess we will wait and see what the others get out of theirs...
Supposedly mine gets here tomorrow... despite wednesday prime order... I can test on Asus, Asrock, SM and HPE.
 

Emulsifide

Active Member
Dec 1, 2014
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Mine showed up today and I tried them out on a SuperMicro X9SCM-F and an ASRock Z68 Extreme3 Gen3 with identical results:



Unfortunately, two of them wouldn't complet POST and hang at the following screen:


The other two boot, but one of them has a beta firmware on it:



I tried flashing the one with the beta firmware to the latest M5210 firmware and an attempted cross-flash to the 9361-8i, but StoreCLI does not recognize there being a raid controller present. I did this using Windows. I'll have to give it another shot using linux tomorrow. Regardless, I really need all four of them functional for the project I'm working on. I have no idea what to do with the two that won't complete POST other than trying to hot swap them with a working one and then attempting a reflash, but I highly doubt that will work. I'll keep tinkering!
 

Patriot

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Apr 18, 2011
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These are clearly not new... given the antistatic bags they were in... sold as new on amazon, I have time.
 

wardtj

Member
Jan 23, 2015
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Mine showed up today and I tried them out on a SuperMicro X9SCM-F and an ASRock Z68 Extreme3 Gen3 with identical results:



Unfortunately, two of them wouldn't complet POST and hang at the following screen:


The other two boot, but one of them has a beta firmware on it:



I tried flashing the one with the beta firmware to the latest M5210 firmware and an attempted cross-flash to the 9361-8i, but StoreCLI does not recognize there being a raid controller present. I did this using Windows. I'll have to give it another shot using linux tomorrow. Regardless, I really need all four of them functional for the project I'm working on. I have no idea what to do with the two that won't complete POST other than trying to hot swap them with a working one and then attempting a reflash, but I highly doubt that will work. I'll keep tinkering!
From personal experience with the X9SCM-F and too many LSI controllers to count, your experience is not uncommon.

I have a X9SCM-F and a LSI9271 and a 9260. I had to fiddle with them for a while to get the right combination of firmware on the cards and the proper BIOS on the SCM for the cards to boot properly. It's very finicky. I would try the latest BIOS, and then 2.0a. Different combinations, have different effects. However, you need to watch your IPMI versions, as it may or may not work with the lower BIOS levels.

Fun times! Though, I do not doubt something is seriously messed up when you get a Beta BIOS. Are these even legit? Or are they factory defects that where "fixed" and sold from someone at the factory? There's a big market for LSI fraud, same with Intel...
 

izx

Active Member
Jan 17, 2016
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So, the consensus is that these are vendor-locked to IBM hardware?

Interestingly, from some digging around in the LSI SAS2 HBA/RAID development docs, there's no guarantee a SoC on an OEM board will take the reference LSI firmware. LSI provides OEMs with a "firmware SDK" and a text configuration file with the baseline parameters. If the OEM builds a reference board with no (or minimal) changes, the board should cross-flash.

But OEMs can buy "value-added" licenses from LSI for things such as vendor locking, hardware keys to unlock RAID levels, larger cache RAM support, etc., and the OEM incorporates those into firmware via the SDK. Some features may just require changes to the base parameters, while others also add binary blobs into the firmware. Cards with the latter will most likely not cross-flash.
 

Stereodude

Active Member
Feb 21, 2016
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FWIW, my IBM ServeRAID M5016 cards have worked great in non IBM hardware. They'll take a LSI firmware no issues either. You can load the firmware directly via MSM even.
 

Emulsifide

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Dec 1, 2014
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Guys, I hate to say it, but I've given up on this one. The cards will not accept a standard firmware from IBM or LSI, so I'm betting these are pre-production models that got into the hands of this seller. I've gone ahead an initiated a refund with the seller on the basis that two of them are completely defective. Sorry for the bogus product post! If I find a better replacement, I'll let you guys know after I test.
 
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Mars2k

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Jul 2, 2014
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Guys just found this thread, Got a pair of these M5210, love to cross flash them. Is there any consensus on what the working combo is. Also cannot get MSM to discover server. Got a failed raid set after a trip away from home. Can't get MSM to tell me anything and UEFI boot gets me to the Megaraid utilities but will not allow me to access anything really configurable. Configuration is Asrock z97 Extreme 9 Windows 10 Cant fix a broken raid set cant configure card. Can anyone point to decent docs for config in uefi or troubleshooting the MSM inside Windows
 

Gnodu

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Oct 10, 2015
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I've NOT messed with this on mine (got busy and priorities changed), however, I would point you to:
http://public.dhe.ibm.com/systems/s...raid_m5210_sassata_controller_users_guide.pdf
Specifically page 20, referring to J1B4- I believe this is the Jumper that needs to be present (similar to other 93xx cards) in Oder to really do much-- I thought I saw other posts that indicated that the jumper was more than just the SBR reset.

Copying here, in case of link issues:
Referring to j1b4:
When shunted provides the ability to bypass loading the Bootstrap configuration from external SBR EEPROM device and load the default system values within the ROC. This will allow the hardware to recover the blank or corrupted SBR device using Mega RAID software utilities.

Default mode of operation is to not have a shunt on this jumper and load the Bootstrap configuration from external SBR EEPROM device.
 
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