Bricked Intel AXXRMS2AF040

[dragonme]

well I thought I had found a good guide to convert this intel board from a megaraid lsi2008 to an IT board but in the process appears now to be bricked

sas2flash and megaraid tools fail to see the card....

I tried using intels flash tools and firmware and it doesnt see the card either...

anyone have a solution?


thanks

 

[dragonme]

anyone... beuler .. beuler...

 

[dragonme]

thanks for the reply.. I though this site was a wealth of information but I guess I post problems that are on the fringe!! so thanks for helping out.. but I think the only way around this is if someone can flash the rom with a programmer!!

I downloaded a file that suppositly upgraded from megaraid to it mode.. here is the readme..

1) Prepare a USB stick you do not mind formatting. You only need about 12MB.

2) Go into the bootable_usb_stick directory and install the HP USB Boot Utility (HP_USB_Boot_Utility.exe)

3) Launch the HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool

4) See screenshot "bootable_usb_stick.png" as reference, you just need to select "FAT32" file system
I named the volume KILLMEGA , "Quick Format" otherwise it takes a LONG time, "Create a DOS startup disk"
and select "using DOS system files located at:" and browse to the directory "usbdos" which is a sub
folder under the boot_usb_stick directory where you installed the HP USB Boot Utility.
Click start

5) Once completed, unzip "LSIMega.zip" to the root of the usb stick.

6) Boot up to the usb stick.

7) Launch each step, Step 1, 1.bat (This will dump all the information about your card to a file Named ADAPTERS.TXT
In this file is your SAS Address which will be required for step 6 (6.bat)

Example:
HW Configuration
================
SAS Address : 500605b001f31fa0

8) Step 2, 2.bat will save your current controllers SBR to a file Mega.sbr, please rename it to the cards model
your using this on, example IBM M1015, rename mega.sbr to SBRM1015.bin and post on the forum (would like
to collect all SBRs)

9) Step 3, 3.bat will wipe your current SBR and clear your controllers BIOs.

10) Set 4, Shutdown your system now, plug your USB stick in another system were you can get at the ADAPTERS.TXT
(that was dumped in step 1) file to write donw your SAS Controllers Address

11) Put back usb stick in the system with the Mega card and boot to usb again.

12) In step 5 you can Flash your card to either IT or IR mode by lauched the respective batch file (5IT.bat or
5IR.bat) This will file your mega controller to SAS2008 firmware P10 (lastest as of time posted)

13) Step 6, 6.bat will echo out the command you need to run manually in a commandline to re-program back your
SAS Address you obtain when you shutdown your system and wrote it down from the ADAPTERS.TXT file

SHOULD for any reason the SAS Address have not been in the ADAPTERS.TXT file, it should be on a sticker on the
back of your controller card, 16 characters without "-" dashes or spaces

14) reboot and enjoy!



I used megarec for EFI and did essentially

MegaRec.efi -readsbr 0 Mega.sbr

MegaRec -writesbr 0 empty.bin

MegaRec -cleanflash 0

after reboot per the instructions the card never came back

I have tried megacli, megaoem, megarec, sas2flash etc.. the card no longer even shows up in the pci list I dont think... all the utilities say no cards found..

this is a mezzanine type card that attached to the motherboard and takes over one of the pci-e 4x slots...

so I cant move it to a different motherboard or anything to try something different...

I really think I am hosed ... but please by all means if you have some ideas of commands I can run.. I will try them!!
I am using a intel S5520HC server motherboard and it has bios, UEFI and EFI shell as options

 

[pricklypunter]

I assume you have pulled the card, rebooted and shut down, then installed the card and booted again? Sometimes bios's need to re-enumerate things as they get jiggled about

 

[dragonme]

thanks for keeping this alive and giving me hints and tips to try..

I am pretty sure I took the card out and tried it with it plugged into drive, not plugged into drives.. etc

I may try again

the sbrempty.bin.. dont know.. but in the files with the package that came with the instructions for crossflashing .. there is a empty.bin and no sbrempty.bin.. so I guess its just the filename for the .bin file?? dont know

I failed to mention that I also had a win98 bootstick and tried the tools on that as well.. got some errors there and still could not see the card

in EFI shell I dont even think the card comes up in the pci list


intel wont help.. of course..

 

[dragonme]

I dont need this thing bootable.. dont need megaraid.. just need damn IT mode.. but the card is a ghost to the hardware

 

[pricklypunter]

A long shot, are there any surface mount fuses on the card? Maybe take any covers off and snap a couple of hi-res photos and post them?

 

[dragonme]

the card was working before I wiped it trying to flash it.. I doubt a blew a fuse!!

 

[dragonme]

sorry.. yes I have been unable to work on it further.. it remains in its bricked state for now as I am trying to figure out my ultimate direction for this new box.

ultimately I wanted to convert it to IT to use as a zfs HBA on this new system

It s a rackable s3012 which is a half depth, 3u, 12 drive plane box with dual l5640s and 48gb ram. essentially its a 1u since the backplane box sits on top of the board over the pci-e slots (board mounted back to front) and provides only one internal pci-e slot.

I have a lsi 4i-4e card that I was planning on using along with using the internal 6x ich10 and 4 off the intel mez card.

I am debating about running OS X native on the hardware vs setting up ESXI 6 and running OS X as a machine along with some other VMs.. or possibly try out photon and run some of the apps as rocket/docker containers.

Right now I have OS X running on it pretty well.

Also, I have ESXI booting off a thumb drive and then running NAPP-IT one off a internal USB 2.5 hard drive to serve up ZFS storage that is being NFSed to ESXI for machine storage and general data pools. That required a hack to esxi but seems to work ok.. albeit not something one would do in the real world but for a home server its livable..

I am also considering Freenas instead of napp-it but dont like the way it partitions drives instead of giving the raw device to ZFS .. that is really bad practice and worse if you let freenas use each drives partition as a swap.. which is does automatically. perhaps they will un-dick-it in version 10.

lastly, I was looking at proxmox since it provides containers and zfs .. but running my OS X instance would be more tricky..

have not had much time to play around with it of late.. and my old system, an old socket 775 gigabyte based e8400 running OS X as my plex server, file server, and security cameras is still working fine but needs to be retired.. I have over 10tb of data I will need to move to the new solution so whatever I do I want to get it right the first time..

thanks for the suggestions and love the community here!

 

[nthu9280]

If Megarec can't see the card, your options are very limited.

See if this works
MegaRec -writesbr <n> <your-SBR-backup.bin> where <n> is the Adp#

If Megarec can see the controller after that, you may be able to move forward.

Here are couple of other options.
MegaCli -AdpFwFlash -f filename [-ResetNow] [-NoSigChk] [-NoVerChk] [-FWTYPE n] -aN|-a0,1,2|-aALL

MegaSCU -AdpFwFlash -f filename [-NoSigChk] [-NoVerChk] [-FWTYPE n] -aN|-a0,1,2|-aALL

If you have more than one controller, it should be the correct adapter/controller#
MegaRec -cleanflash <n>

Lastly, you can give this a try. There is a Recover menu.
Avago Technologies

 

[dragonme]

thanks.. I will give those a try..

i really think I am buggerd though.. I mean the card doesnt even show up in the pci devices list in efi shell..

worth a shot though