Anyone ever cross-flashed an HP-branded adaptec controller with stock firmware?

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AveryFreeman

consummate homelabber
Mar 17, 2017
413
54
28
42
Near Seattle
averyfreeman.com
Hey,

So I have this controller. It's a smartHBA 2100-4i4e. I bought it thinking it should be compatible with SmartHBA firmware, but I neglected to read the fine print that it is sold by HP. So now I find out it's only compatible with HP firmware, as far as I can tell.

Has anyone ever managed to flash an HP-branded Adaptec HBA with stock Adaptec firmware? The HP firmware hasn't been updated since 2018.

The latest firmware I could get on it is 1.98 while the Adaptec site just released 3.21 a few months ago.

I've tried using both the HP ssflash.exe utility and Adaptec's arcconf and maxview storage managers to update with stock Adaptec firmware, no luck yet. It definitely doesn't seem to be as easy as an LSI controller - I just flashed an HP 9214-4i with LSI 9214-4i4e firmware last month.

I've opened the two .bin files in HxD (hex editor) and looked through the differences, but I'm really not sure what I'm doing. One clue is a verbose flash will appear to flash the entire file until it gets to the end, and then I get a "security error" at the end of the file.

Any ideas much appreciated!
 

AveryFreeman

consummate homelabber
Mar 17, 2017
413
54
28
42
Near Seattle
averyfreeman.com
Damn, nobody has any idea how to cross-flash an adaptec, huh? What a shame, I'm really disappointed...

This is the closest thing I've come up with so far, but it's for a reeaaallly old controller: sun stk raid int / adaptec 5805 firmware flashing

apparently the command is:

Code:
afu update /SkIp
(capitalization intentional and required)

I am a little skeptical this'll work with my card. But I'll probably give it a shot just to be sure...