LSI SAS 9201-16e's for $40

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aero

Active Member
Apr 27, 2016
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That's a pretty good deal, and seller accepted $40 for me too. It still boggles my mind why the 16e card can go for $40, while the 16i cards go for $350+.
 
A

abq

Active Member
May 23, 2015
675
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@TuxDude, Thank You for sharing deal on these cards :) ...@aero, I share your amazement. must be alot of the -16e on the market, not many -16i. Lucky that i needed mostly -16e cards:) now if I could just find one economical -16i (~$50), all i need is one !
 
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Jannis Jacobsen

Active Member
Mar 19, 2016
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Norway
Thats the card I got some weeks back.
tried connecting 12 drives to it via sff-8087 to sata cables to a sff-8088 to sff-8087 adapter, then sff-8088 cables to the card.
the card detects no drives.

hopefully it'll work with my sm 45bay jbod

-Jannis
 
mattr

mattr

Member
Aug 1, 2013
120
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Jannis Jacobsen said:
Thats the card I got some weeks back.
tried connecting 12 drives to it via sff-8087 to sata cables to a sff-8088 to sff-8087 adapter, then sff-8088 cables to the card.
the card detects no drives.

hopefully it'll work with my sm 45bay jbod

-Jannis
Click to expand...
Lots of possible failure points there.

It should be noted that Amazon, Newegg and eBay have a ton of SFF-8088 to 4x SATA cables that look identical to the thin blue Supermicro/CableMatters cables but they are not even close to the same. They are only SAS1 spec and will fail to connect to most drives.

Make sure you buy the ones sold by Supermicro or CableMatters.

Also, these cards aren't that great of a deal if you don't already own the cables and/or the adapters you're going to need. Depending on how many drives you need to connect it might be cheaper to set up an alert for the 16i to show up on eBay for ~$250ish and use SFF-8087 cables.
 
J

Jetlag

New Member
Jun 7, 2016
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mattr said:
Lots of possible failure points there.

It should be noted that Amazon, Newegg and eBay have a ton of SFF-8088 to 4x SATA cables that look identical to the thin blue Supermicro/CableMatters cables but they are not even close to the same. They are only SAS1 spec and will fail to connect to most drives.

Make sure you buy the ones sold by Supermicro or CableMatters.
Click to expand...
Are the cheap SFF-8087 to SATA bad too? I'm running on cheap ebay cables.
 
N

Nom

Member
Oct 5, 2015
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mattr said:
It should be noted that Amazon, Newegg and eBay have a ton of SFF-8088 to 4x SATA cables that look identical to the thin blue Supermicro/CableMatters cables but they are not even close to the same. They are only SAS1 spec and will fail to connect to most drives.
Make sure you buy the ones sold by Supermicro or CableMatters.
Click to expand...
Which CableMatters cable are you referring to ? I can't find any SFF-8088 to SATA cable on their site Cable Matters Mini SAS Cable CableMatters CableMatters.com
 
mattr

mattr

Member
Aug 1, 2013
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Jetlag said:
Are the cheap SFF-8087 to SATA bad too? I'm running on cheap ebay cables.
Click to expand...
I'm sure there are some bad ones out there. Typically issues with cabling show up immediately though. As in a disk not being detected or speeds being limited much lower than they should. If you haven't had any issues I wouldn't worry about it.
 
mattr

mattr

Member
Aug 1, 2013
120
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Nom said:
Which CableMatters cable are you referring to ? I can't find any SFF-8088 to SATA cable on their site Cable Matters Mini SAS Cable CableMatters CableMatters.com
Click to expand...
Hmm... I purchased them from Amazon. When I view my order though the item is currently unavailable and the item is even listed as a different manufacturer now. I can't even find the Supermicro ones anywhere anymore. That's a shame since they were the only properly spec'd ones I've found at a reasonable price. Any other decent 6Gbps SFF-8088 to SATA I've found run $40 or more.
 
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Nom

Member
Oct 5, 2015
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Received my card yesterday, but unfortunately it seems to have dead firmware :(
Nothing is detected during POST, and any attempts to reflash or even do a SAS2FLSH - LISTALL just result in a "Chip is in FAULT state" "Firmware fault occurred. Fault code: 0a" as below.
Time to organise a return...
 
M

mjygvfesz

Member
Nov 14, 2014
71
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Have you tried doing a firmware erase I believe its sas2flash -o -e 6 then flashing it to your preferred firmware?
 
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Nom

Member
Oct 5, 2015
36
11
8
Yeah, the result is the same - any commands with sas2flash (even informational commands like -LISTALL) immediately say "Controller is not operational. A firmware download is required. Enter firmware file name or quite to exit :"
So I'm pointing it at the 9201-16e.bin file (P20 firmware from SAS 9201-16e Host Bus Adapter) - and I get the message above.
I've tried the card in a bunch of DELL and HP desktop machines - same result in each.

I suppose it's conceivable that if I used the original DELL firmware file, the process might work - but I have no idea how to find that download. The DELL part number on the card is KV5JY.
 
TuxDude

TuxDude

Well-Known Member
Sep 17, 2011
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Mine arrived earlier this week. I had a couple of initial problems which turned out to be a bug in the kernel version I was using (thanks to @whitey for this thread which got me going: Fun times with LSI HBA and mpt2sas on AIO configs). It had firmware version 8 on it when I got it, but its happy running P20 IT mode now.

Good luck with your return - that does sound like a bad card.
 
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N

nthu9280

Well-Known Member
Feb 3, 2016
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San Antonio, TX
Nom said:
Received my card yesterday, but unfortunately it seems to have dead firmware :(
Nothing is detected during POST, and any attempts to reflash or even do a SAS2FLSH - LISTALL just result in a "Chip is in FAULT state" "Firmware fault occurred. Fault code: 0a" as below.
Time to organise a return...
Click to expand...
It may be a bad card. But newer version of sas2flsh may also be the culprit. I'd try with sas2flsh ver. P7 and FW first. If you are successful, moving from p7 to p20 is a breeze.

Sent from my Nexus 6 using Tapatalk
 
N

Nom

Member
Oct 5, 2015
36
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nthu9280 said:
It may be a bad card. But newer version of sas2flsh may also be the culprit. I'd try with sas2flsh ver. P7 and FW first.
Click to expand...
Yeah, I already tried a few older versions thinking it might be some sort of locked card - but whatever I did, the result was the same. Pretty sure the firmware was broke !
Seller has been helpful so far, I'm just waiting for details to post the faulty card back for replacement.
 
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