ARGH! Just Bricked 2 x H200 controllers

[Stanza33]

Hmmm

2 x Dell H200's (both external connection SFF-8088 versions)

Tried upgrading them in a HP DC7900 desktop (used this to upgrade / cross flash many a SAS card before)

Tried one card.... couldn't get it to take the firmware (v13.5)... it took the latest LSI MPTSAS2.ROM file fine.

So I tried the DELL upgrade utility... which went fine and upgraded the card to a later IR firmware.

Rebooted and tried the LSI cross flash again.

Got the firmware on... then got stuck at resetting adapter.

Waiting for a good 1/2 hour just in case.... but she's a got no life captain.
Only option was to reboot... (yes I know once you do this your fragged...but you never know)
Card is complaining at boot of corrupt MPT Bios.

Even tried to pop in the second card... hoping it might load the MPT BIOs 1st and let me back into the dead card... But thats a no go either.

Tried the second card.... similar problems... accept this one I tried the "wipe the flash / bios route) first... then load the new firmware and BIOS...

Killed that one as well

One internal SFF-8087 H200 left.....

Think I might try this one with a lower firmware V12 instead... and in a different machine me thinks

Anyone had any luck reviving one before?

.

 

[mwroobel]

Does it just say corrupt MPT or does it say something like MPT BIOS Fault XXh at PCI xxh, xxh, xxh? If so, what are the numbers before all the h's?

 

[Stanza33]

Does it just say corrupt MPT or does it say something like MPT BIOS Fault XXh at PCI xxh, xxh, xxh? If so, what are the numbers before all the h's?

Yeah one says
MPT Bios Fault encountered.. blah blah at PCI 01h, 00h, 00h from memory (not near it at present)

Other one is yet be be checked, as it was late so I just turned it off an went night night.

 

[mwroobel]

Yeah one says
MPT Bios Fault encountered.. blah blah at PCI 01h, 00h, 00h from memory (not near it at present)

Other one is yet be be checked, as it was late so I just turned it off an went night night.

If it is 01, that means Fault 01: No I/O port assigned to the adapter. which is usually a BIOS contention issue where there is not enough option ROM space available. Let me know what the numbers really are when you et back to the machine.

 

[Stanza33]

Yeah will pop it in a Supermicro or Proliant and see what it says...

I would have thought it would should still work... just not be able to load the bios into ROM space tho?

1st adventure with a 2008 card tho...

 

[Stanza33]

Popped it in the Proliant ML350 G5

At least it let me get past the BIOS load error.

DOS Boot and firmware flash sort of worked.
Stuck now at resetting adapter again... (this is where it stopped last night and I had to power down)

Will reboot and see if it actually uploaded

As from what I can tell...
the firmware gets uploaded to a backup area... once it's happy then it overwrites the firmware from the backup area.......when it says resetting adapter.

.

 

[Stanza33]

Ok on with the story

upon boot we have now a 09h error

Skip past and have a looksee at the card

Hmmm back here again.

Ok I will try v12 of the firmware this time (last time was v13.5 IR)

This time it won't take the v12 IR Firmware (no space?)

Wil try the v12 IT Firmware this time...

sas2flsh -o -f 2118.bin

Fails with Mfg Page 2 error ( I presume it's meaning card says DELL, but firmware is LSI??)


.

Maybe try the erase firmware??

sas2flsh -o -e 6

??

Which I performed on the second card... but now thats in worse shape than this one...

.

 

[Stanza33]

Getting closer.

Tried all the erase firmware steps

sas2flsh -o -e 1
sas2flsh -o -e 2
sas2flsh -o -e 3
sas2flsh -o -e 4
sas2flsh -o -e 5
sas2flsh -o -e 6

looks like it's erasing... but the stalls once again at resetting the card (the actual update/erase??)

Reboot and back to where we started

so

Grabbed the DELL 6GBPS SAS HBA fireware package, as having a google around... it might be that the sas2flsh program included in the LSI firmware doesn't work for cross flashing ala when doing a BR10i (should have thought of that myself actually)

Dell update just sits there dumb

manually playing and it does something.... gets further

continued

 

[Stanza33]

But now after the above has updated the MfgPage 2 settings

The dell flash seems to actually find a card (even tho it's not recognised as the right one)

On an on... ever upward.

.

 

[Stanza33]

After more fiddling and mucking around.

wiped firmware

sas2flsh -o -e 6

tried to upload new firmware (Dell 6Gbps SAS) as this is what the card ACTUALLY is...it is not a H200

6Gbps SAS HBA

No Raid and card doesn't have a ram chip on the back side
Explains why maybe the LSI firmware didn't work

For future reference

Dell UCS-70 = 6Gbps SAS HBA (8 external ports)
Dell UCS-71 = PERC H200 Adapter (8 internal ports) and does Hardware-based RAID

So anyways, now I am stuck in a loop of sorts.

I downloaded the Dell firmware package

sas2flsh -o -f 6gbpsas.fw FAILS

Still has trouble with the

sas2flsh -o -b mptsas2.rom Works

sas2flsh -list shows

Seems the card is now thinking it's an LSI card not a Dell.
So the Dell vesrion of sas2flsh maybe is the problem?

will try now with the LSI sas2flsh using the Dell firmware.

Next trick will be to add back the SAS address to the card

.

So how do I get the firmware to take?

 

[Stanza33]

reboot

Hmmm

So lets try the LSI version of sas2flsh

Bingo

Now lets add the UEFI bios

Reboot and..........

It's alive !!!!

I think
.

 

[Stanza33]

Second card seems totally dead tho...

Can't get past boot bios area.

Blank

 

[mwroobel]

The 0Dh error is Fault 0D: Timeout waiting for IOC to reply., which is likely a PCIe init error (bad card)

 

[cw823]

I didn't follow these steps exactly, but they were a thousand times helpful in fixing my bricked H200. thanks!

 

[leeleatherwood]

damn, nice job.