Cross-flashing Dell RAID firmwares to alternate devices with only a .rom file.

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frogtech

Well-Known Member
Jan 4, 2016
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There are countless guides out there for cross flashing traditional Dell PERC cards to the more vanilla firmwares for many of the older and newer SAS2 and 3 chipsets. However, I'm looking to try and cross flash the firmware of a specialized adapter, specifically the Dell Shared PERC 8-External for VRTX, onto H810 adapters.

As you can see these devices are identical hardware wise:

-first 3 pics, H810, second 3 pics, SPERC8-e

The firmware DUP package from Dell only contains a file in the payload folder named FW_SPERC8_E.rom, however most crossflashing guides reference .bin and .fw files in 2 separate steps.

Can I still use sas2flash and other various utilities to flash a .rom file in place of .bin and .fw?

Would I need to extract firmware from an actual SPERC8-e to use in conjunction with the .rom file?
 

Dave Corder

Active Member
Dec 21, 2015
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So the Dell H810 is essentially a Dell H710, but with external ports. So this card is flashable to IT mode, or the generic LSI firmware. As for flashing it over to a Dell proprietary rom? Not sure if this is possible, but you are right, the hardware is identical, so it may be doable. I would try Megacli to crossflash this card, as opposed to the LSI tools.

I would try the rom in megacli.

To crossflash, you can simply type: megacli -adpfwflash -f dellsperc8-e.rom -noverchk -a0

or

megacli -m0flash sperc8-e.bin

At this point, you can only try to see what happens. It may work, or it may brick my friend. If you are successful, you would be the first one to try, but if its not, then this too is the cost of tinkering my friend!

Good luck!
I suspect that @frogtech will also need the SBR from the "Dell Shared PERC 8-External for VRTX" adapter to load onto the H810 EEPROM (or edit the H810's SBR with the Dell Shared PERC 8-External for VRTX PCI IDs).
 
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frogtech

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Jan 4, 2016
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I suspect that @frogtech will also need the SBR from the "Dell Shared PERC 8-External for VRTX" adapter to load onto the H810 EEPROM (or edit the H810's SBR with the Dell Shared PERC 8-External for VRTX PCI IDs).
I do have a SPERC8-e card I can throw into a spare rig and dump firmware from, provided there's commands to do that stuff in megacli and what not. Haven't done any flashing in a while so I'm not immediately aware of the capabilities.
 
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powerbtn

New Member
Feb 11, 2023
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To dump the sbr, you would need Megarec.

Just type: Megarec --readsbr 0 SPERC8.sbr

and that will save the card's sbr to the flash drive :.)
Have you guys figured this out? Is it possible? I have 3 H810s that I badly need to flash to SPERC8e.
 
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ouest

New Member
Jul 17, 2013
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Hi,

Me to, do you have the firmware of the original external card dell SPERC8e? And sdr?