My LSI 9202-16e experiences

[mobilenvidia]

It arrived a week after buying it from Ebay

Had a wee shuffle around on the ASUS P8Z77 WS Mobo to give the LSI9202 a PCIe 16x slot with other slot free, to also give it 16x lanes from PLX switch
The LSI 9261 and M1015 (IR) are in the other slots so they both get PCIe 8x electrically
Started up machine, I see a heart beat so, that was good.
Machine booted up as normal, I boot in UEFI mode so see very little happening at boot time and it's fast even with 3x LSI controllers

Quickly open MSM and device manager.

First thing I noticed, the device shows in MSM as a 'SAS Quad Port 6G', which is what it is of course it does not mention 2x SAS2008 controllers
Windows 8 shows it as a single SAS2008 Falcon
I may need to boot to DOS and see whats going on under the hood
If the above is true with a single device then, the driver must surely separate the SAS requests to each SAS2008

I can't do much drive testing as I have no cables yet.

It is the triple Heatsink version, heatsinks are numbered with LSI I presume part numbers

 

[mobilenvidia]

Hmmm, OK looking at Jeffs LSI 9202 write up, there should be 2x cards showing.
I can only get one.

Wonder if it's a Mobo issue or the card is faulty.
I've tried it on 2 different Motherboards.

Also noticed that the Flash ROM is only 4MB on the LSI9202 vs 16MB on the M1015

 

[cactus]

Can you string PCI-E switch to PCI-E switch?

 

[mobilenvidia]

Both PLX switches show in AIDA64
Wonder if 2nd SAS2008 has a bad flash from previous owner ?

 

[mobilenvidia]

Jeff and or Paul, can you have a nosey please at your 9202's and see what Bus/device/Function both the the SAS2008s are on.
I'll attempt to flash the SAS2008 that nothing can see by using the above address.
Last hope before the card goes back to Sacremento.

 

[dba]

I'm running Solaris 11.1 so my PCIe info won't be of much use to you. I do know from earlier tests that the card shows up in SIV (System Information Viewer from RH Software) as a PLX switch plus two LSISAS200 devices with consecutive bus numbers. You even have to update the firmware twice - once per chip. In Windows device manager it shows up as two separate devices.

If you run sas2flash -listall, what do you see? Take a look at the screenshot in http://www.servethehome.com/lsi-9202-16/ for comparison.

Jeff and or Paul, can you have a nosey please at your 9202's and see what Bus/device/Function both the the SAS2008s are on.
I'll attempt to flash the SAS2008 that nothing can see by using the above address.
Last hope before the card goes back to Sacremento.

 

[mobilenvidia]

I've tried every single LSI utility, LSIUtil 1.63 (google it) is a good utility also has alternate OS version
But none see the 2nd SAS2008

All I need is the Bus, device, and Function for both SAS2008 this shouldn't change no matter what OS
I'm assuming the device will remain the same, device will probably change or Function.

sas2flsh has a firmware flash to the above, I might be able to force an update to a blind address, a long shot
any help appreciated

 

[mobilenvidia]

• CQ 123536 : staged device discovery: Added command line option called
disable_discovery. When enabled on the command line, the driver will not
send a port_enable when loaded for the first time. If port_enable is not
called, then there is no discovery of devices, as well as the sas topology.
Then later if one desires to invoke discovery, then they will need to issue a
diagnostic reset. A diagnostic reset can be issued various ways, either
using an application like lsiutil, or via sysfs

From a document at LSI
Hmmm, given me some hope.

 

[dba]

Here is some information from a server running Windows 2008 that has two 9202-16e cards:

Windows device manager shows:

PCI bus 10, device 0, function 0 LSISAS2008
PCI bus 11, device 0, function 0 LSISAS2008
PCI bus 70, device 0, function 0 LSISAS2008
PCI bus 71, device 0, function 0 LSISAS2008

The PLX 8632 chip shows up as PCI bus 7, 8, 68, and 69.

Jeff and or Paul, can you have a nosey please at your 9202's and see what Bus/device/Function both the the SAS2008s are on.
I'll attempt to flash the SAS2008 that nothing can see by using the above address.
Last hope before the card goes back to Sacremento.

 

[mobilenvidia]

Cheers for that, it does mean that there is now no hope to resurrect the card (with my knowledge)
Was hoping for same PCI address but different device to blind flash the sas2008

Back the card goes to sunny CA

 

[mobilenvidia]

Not sent it away yet, have been searching for a PLX utility, and found the below.

PLX SDK Complete Package (v6.5 Final, 2011-09-30) (You need to register)
This package contains the complete PLX SDK in a Windows self-extracting executable. This includes support for Windows, Linux, and all SDK Manuals.

PLX SDK app, that allows you to have a play around with PLX devices.
Quite neat, can check for PCIe speeds on each device, ie my GTX470 video card seems to running at Gen1 link, hmmm
Lots of other functions too.

The 9202 PLX8632 looks to be working as it should.
One port on the PLX with working SAS2008 is linked at PCIe Gen2
Other port with non working SAS2008 is linked at PCIe Gen1

Doesn't look good for 2nd SAS2008, even though it gets hot, me thinks its broke

 

[mobilenvidia]

Still fluffing about with this card.

Trialing on ASRock Fatal1ty Z77 Pro-M

Doesn't work in a PCIe 4x slot, there is a heartbeat and Mobo sees the PLX bridge but SAS2008 won't initialise

I tell a lie, if I remove all other PCIe cards it works

If I put in the 2nd PCIe 8x slot won't work, heartbeat etc

If I put in 1st PCIe slot (VGA normally goes) then it does work

Still getting no further in reviving the 2nd SAS2008

 

[mrkrad]

why wouldn't you stick it in a low end server like a workstation mobo? you try the pin 5/6 smbus tape trick?

 

[mobilenvidia]

why wouldn't you stick it in a low end server like a workstation mobo? you try the pin 5/6 smbus tape trick?

I'm just playing with it, as it's no good with just 8 ports.

SMbus trick first thing I tried.
PLX utility = no good
all LSI utilities = no good

 

[RimBlock]

Mine should arrive by Monday and my cables are already here so let me know if you want me to check anything out before I do the server build.

RB

 

[mobilenvidia]

Dusted of the good 9202 with one working SAS2008
Strange things on ASRock Fatal1ty board
9202 refuses to be seen by system
System sees the PLX 8632 bridge but not SAS2008 behind it
I flashed it in my P55 board (only board with no PAL error in DOS)
Works fine on P55 board but nothing on ASRock Z77 mobo
LSI9266 works fine in Slot 1, 9202 in slot 2
ASUS Mobo is playing funny games with RAM slots, can't use that either.

Why can't things just work.