Dell H200 DOA?

[chinesestunna]

Hi all,

Recently acquired a Dell H200 to flash into IT mode and use to drive a ZFS array. The card arrived but it isn't recognized by any systems I have, mostly older non-UEFI boxes. No additional screen during POST and neither SAS2FLSH or MEGAREC can see the card.
I have a H200 currently in use and I noticed the new one does not have a blinking green LED, guessing this is a bad sign but I've read about recovery modes and strange situations where the LED would be off in the past so figure I ask if anyone have any ideas to revive this?

Thanks!

 

[Terry Kennedy]

Recently acquired a Dell H200 to flash into IT mode and use to drive a ZFS array. The card arrived but it isn't recognized by any systems I have, mostly older non-UEFI boxes. No additional screen during POST and neither SAS2FLSH or MEGAREC can see the card.
I have a H200 currently in use and I noticed the new one does not have a blinking green LED, guessing this is a bad sign but I've read about recovery modes and strange situations where the LED would be off in the past so figure I ask if anyone have any ideas to revive this?

I don't know if this is related, but sometimes the SMBUS on those cards causes issues, either the system not seeing the card or the card not being detected by the system. Do a search for "perc pin tape".

Generally, if the heartbeat LED isn't blinking, the firmware isn't running. However, the card should still be detectable by the LSI utilities as long as the SBR/SPD is intact. The regular SAS2FLSH utility will ask for the name of a firmware file to download to the card's RAM to get it running, and will then proceed with the flash operation once the card is running.

 

[chinesestunna]

I don't know if this is related, but sometimes the SMBUS on those cards causes issues, either the system not seeing the card or the card not being detected by the system. Do a search for "perc pin tape".

Generally, if the heartbeat LED isn't blinking, the firmware isn't running. However, the card should still be detectable by the LSI utilities as long as the SBR/SPD is intact. The regular SAS2FLSH utility will ask for the name of a firmware file to download to the card's RAM to get it running, and will then proceed with the flash operation once the card is running.

I've checked the guides, specifically this one: Updated: SAS HBA crossflashing or flashing to IT mode, Dell Perc H200 and H310

The tape trick seems to be required for the H310 cards but not H200.
Running the following command:

• sas2flsh.exe -listall

Does not show up with any controllers detected.

 

[Terry Kennedy]

Running the following command:

• sas2flsh.exe -listall

Does not show up with any controllers detected.

And megarec? sas2flsh assumes that the controller is detectable via the "usual means". Megarec seems to be designed to be a tool to recover dead controllers (hence the name) and is a little more thorough when looking for controllers.

Another thing to do is to try a motherboard with a different BIOS and / or chipset. I can imagine a case where the bios / chipset decides there's no card in a slot and therefore doesn't assign any resources to the slot. If the slot is isolated that way, megarec won't be able to see the card.

 

[chinesestunna]

And megarec? sas2flsh assumes that the controller is detectable via the "usual means". Megarec seems to be designed to be a tool to recover dead controllers (hence the name) and is a little more thorough when looking for controllers.

Another thing to do is to try a motherboard with a different BIOS and / or chipset. I can imagine a case where the bios / chipset decides there's no card in a slot and therefore doesn't assign any resources to the slot. If the slot is isolated that way, megarec won't be able to see the card.

Thanks for the suggestion, I ran the following megarec command: megacli.exe -AdpAllInfo -aAll -page 20
but also nothing is found. I will try the other motherboard option when that is available. The only other system I have is UEFI based which could at least test an alternative approach.