Supermicro X9DAi: reboot loop (OH)/Fan Fail LED

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jadran

New Member
Feb 27, 2013
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Hi to all,

The story; I wanted to build a supermicro workstation for editing, I am a student on film school.

So I bought the supermicro X9DAi motherboard, and have does evil Xeon ES CPU.

I don't have supermicro chassis.
This is a list I have on mine table everything is laying on plastic surface;

Corsair HX750 PSU
Supermicro X9DAi motherboard
2X Xeon QA90 ES chips
ATI 5770

So i connected PSU to motherboard, used one Xeon, and one stick of 4GB RAM

When I start the motherboard with short-circuit PWR pins, I hear one short beep, and after 10 seconds motherboard goes in reboot - loop. and it will do the same if there is no RAM. So motherboard is acting the same, with or without RAM, with or without the GPU.

NOTE1: I connected the LED to front header on motherboard, and LED for Overheating/Fans is steady light, meaning machine is overheating on boot up i believe, but I don't know for sure.

EDIT:
Problem was in BIOS - not able to post with Xeon ES cpu.
Downgrade your bios to version _813 and it should work.
Two ways you can accomplish this task:
1. Use normal Xeon CPU supported by supermicro X9DAi and downgrade your bios.

2. Build simple and effective LPT Rayer_SPI cable, and flash your bios chip with flashrom:
http://rayer.g6.cz/elektro/spipgm.htm
flashrom


EDIT 2:
Here is direct link from SuperMicro to X9dai_813 bios - (08.13.2012.)
http://www.supermicro.com/support/resources/getfile.aspx?ID=1880

I am now using FTDI based Tumpa Lite as SPI Flasher, I was not able to find SPI pins on MB so I bought SOIC8 Test Clip.

Hope this post will help some one.
 
Last edited:

Patrick

Administrator
Staff member
Dec 21, 2010
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Supermicro motherboards generally have no issue running outside of a Supermicro chassis.

Did you look up the beep codes in the manual? Did you try the other CPU? The QA90 was an earlier chip I thought which has me worried there. Any chance you can borrow a non-ES to try?
 

jadran

New Member
Feb 27, 2013
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I dont have non-ES CPU, and in mine homeland there is no lga2001 xeon chips.

No info on one short beep, and reboot in manual.
Guy from who eBay tested does ES chips on supermicro. around the net I saw they work. Maybe flash oldest bios I can find?
 

Patrick

Administrator
Staff member
Dec 21, 2010
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Just to be sure the reboot cycle keeps occuring correct? So you are not shutting it off after 30 seconds? Dual LGA 2011 boards often take 2+ minutes to get into the OS.

Did you clear CMOS? Know anyone else with a higher end power supply or other DIMMs that you might borrow to try out?
 

Mike

Member
May 29, 2012
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I've had the same stupid experience and sequence a while back with a slightly older SM. Check the heatsink, mine was touching a cap and not apparently only touching the sides of the cpi.
 

wyluliraven

Member
Nov 6, 2012
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Atlanta, GA
Well, my thoughts are this:

QA90 (Intel Xeon 2.3 GHz) This is your octo 2011 chip. So it looks like an early stepping of the E5-2660.

My first thought would be to say which kind of memory you are trying to use, because that is something you can relatively easily change. Where finding another non ES CPU would be more difficult and expensive.

Some boards are simply not designed to work with certain ES chips, but it would be prudent to contact the eBay seller and ask which bios revision he used on which supermicro board to verify this chip.
 

nitrobass24

Moderator
Dec 26, 2010
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If it does that without CPU/RAM, then you either have a bad BIOS flash or a bad board.

Can you even enter the BIOS or does it reboot before you can do that?
 

jadran

New Member
Feb 27, 2013
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@Mike
I've had the same stupid experience and sequence a while back with a slightly older SM. Check the heatsink, mine was touching a cap and not apparently only touching the sides of the cpi.
Will look on this!

@Patrick
Just to be sure the reboot cycle keeps occuring correct?
Yes they are.

@wyluliraven
contact the eBay seller and ask which bios revision he used
I contacted him, and he said latest bios revision. Will try to find oldest one possible and flash bios with SPI flasher, already flashed newest one.

@nitrobass24
If it does that without CPU/RAM, then you either have a bad BIOS flash or a bad board.
Can you even enter the BIOS or does it reboot before you can do that?
No I can't enter bios, will test only the board; hope it is not bad board.
 

Salami

New Member
Oct 12, 2012
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Since you only had 1 CPU installed, is it possible you had the RAM in the slot for the 2nd CPU?
 

jadran

New Member
Feb 27, 2013
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Since you only had 1 CPU installed, is it possible you had the RAM in the slot for the 2nd CPU?
It was in right one.

UPDATE: I did removed everything just PSU and MB on a table,and added one fan just to see will something happen, (will it stop spinning and start again) there is no reboot loop, board is running the fan.

And I connected LED to OH/Fain Fail pins, there is no light on it, only on PWR pins.

Does this mean the board is not dead?
Here we don't have any supermicro pre seller here, we don't have server company in general, so if board is not dead I am less worried(for now)
 

jadran

New Member
Feb 27, 2013
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Guys it booted!!!!

I was on the net last night trying to find oldest possible bios for this board.
I ended up with 3 versions: .203 .813 .A17

Two days ago I builded a simple but efective LPT SPI programmer named rayer_spi, it is supported by flashrom, and flashrom supports SFDP bios chips found in supermicro, it is basically 4 resistors and one capacitor on a cable.
http://tinyurl.com/cncek82

This LPT programmer is slow:
30min to read/30min to write/30min to verify, Hour and a half for flashing 16 megabytes SFDP SPI chip.

So in the morning I started flashing oldest one, and went out to find some ecc memory.

Came home and fire the MB with only one CPU and PSU, motherboard started to beep like crazy!
Added one ECC stick and GPU, I HAVE A BIOS!!!!

Then I removed a jumper from JPME1 per SuperMicro BIOS update manual and installed .813 version, it booted!
Off course I tried the latest A17 one to see will I have same simptoms as before, and it did.
I reverted te .813 bios with flashrom and motherboard is booting!
One finding with .203 bios only ECC memory worked, but with .813 mine non ECC stick works.

Q: I don't know where to find all bioses from supermicro is there any repository for it?

I am so happy!
 

jadran

New Member
Feb 27, 2013
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Awesome! Great to hear. I usually look around ftp://ftp.supermicro.com as there is a pretty good archive.
Yes! I am so happy, will look on that ftp!
Looks like the guy on ebay lied about latest bios revision, or maybe when he tested some older bios was latest. Nevertheless small piece of FDD cable and four ressistors saved me big time!

Maybe there is a way to change cpu microcode in latest bios, it was easy before with standard AMI bios, but I believe it is harder with UEFI.
 

nitrobass24

Moderator
Dec 26, 2010
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Glad you got it working. Maybe you can contact SuperMicro and have them add back the MicroCode. I had a bunch of servers a few years ago and I needed a newer revision due to some bugs, and they were happy to help me out.
 

jadran

New Member
Feb 27, 2013
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0
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Glad you got it working. Maybe you can contact SuperMicro and have them add back the MicroCode. I had a bunch of servers a few years ago and I needed a newer revision due to some bugs, and they were happy to help me out.
I don't believe they would add ES chips. As I see it, they are in grey zone, will look tonight on UEFI microcode module and report back.
Maybe I can find something in that area.
 

wyluliraven

Member
Nov 6, 2012
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Atlanta, GA
Supermicro has been quite willing to work with the enthusiast sector in regards to their boards. Both in terms of microcode and overclocking ability. You never know!