SASLP-MV8 Configuration Issues???

[Spinman]

Hope someone can help point me in the right direction.

I have acquired (4) Supermicro SASLP-MV8 (version 1) controller cards off of eBay. Different Vendors, Different Batches. Obviously, I don’t know the history of the cards, prior configurations, or usages…

3 of the 4 cards are recognized by both my Supermicro X7SBE Motherboard and my HP Z400 Workstation. The 4th card is only recognized by the HP Z400. Supermicro will not recognize the 4th card. Contacted Supermicro Support - they said that there is no compatibility problem - as evidenced by the 3 cards that do work with the motherboard.

In as much as 3 of the 4 cards work in the Supermicro, I’m wondering what might be different with the 4th that is causing compatibility problems.

The 3 that are working in both machines do not display the bios screen during boot. Therefore there is not CTL-M available to enter the configuration mode.

I have checked the firmware version using MDU.EXE from a DOS boot [INFO]. All 4 cards report the latest version (3.0.1.21).

I have printed out the configuration for all 4 cards [BACKUP_CFG] – everything looks identical, with the obvious exception serial number and SAS address.

I tried removing the BIOS and PD page in the flash rom using on the troublesome 4th card [MVFLASH]. All this did was eliminate the bios screen during boot (no longer getting the CTL-M prompt). So it this regard, now all 4 cards bypass the bios screen during boot. (Another low priority question - how do I activate the bios so that the CTL-M shows during boot?)

Continuing to look for differences between the 3 “universal” cards and the 1 “troublesome” card, I finally noticed a difference when I tried to restore a configuration backup file from a working universal card using [RESTORE_CFG].

[INFO] reports for the 3 cards:
Product = 11AB-6485
SubVendor ID = 11AB
Sub Device ID 6480

And for the “troublesome” card
Product = 11AB-6480
SubVendor ID = 11AB
Sub Device ID 6480

So (1) is an 11AB-6480 and (3) are 11AB-6485

Is that enough of a difference to cause problems? Should I / How would I flash it to 11AB-6485?

All the boards show version 1.01 - and look identical to the naked eye - but the troublesome unit has the lowest serial number of the bunch...

Where should I go from here to try and get the card working properly so that it can be used in a Supermicro Motherboard - and not just the HP Z400?


Thanks!

 

[mwroobel]

Per the PCI database the 6485 is revision B silicon of the Marvell MV64460/64461/64462 System Controller but that doesnt relate to your board problem. In bizarre problems like this (HBA cross compatibility where one works but another of the same model don't ) the problem tends to be one board is just out of spec enough (Could just be a bad SMT part) to be allowed on one machine where the other has a slightly higher (or lower) tolerance which makes it fail.

 

[Spinman]

I'm sure that's the answer - bizzarre compatibility problems with this one controller card.
Doubt it makes any difference, but I did try it in multiple (but similar) SuperMicro motherboards just to be sure it was not related to a particular board (tried 2 X7SBE, 1 X7SB4 and 1 PDMSE+ boards - which are all cousins of each other).

I was able to get the CTL-M boot option back on the 3 working cards by reflashing the bios - so that is a non-issue.






One final thought / question if anyone knows the answer.

What is the purpose of the AutoLoad Configuration section in the Configuration.TXT file?
Do I need to add values - or can I leave it blank?

The example files provided in the bios update zip left the section blank:
[AUTOLOAD CONFIG] # Autoload data
[BEGIN]
[END]

When I backed up the configuration for the 3 cards working properly - they had 67 entries such as:
0x0038::0x00000000

all of the entries were the same - 0x00000000

When I backup the configuration for the troublesome card - it only had 6 entries.


[AUTOLOAD CONFIG] # Autoload data
[BEGIN]
0x0038::0x0000aa55
0x003c::0x00000000
0x0040::0x648511ab
0x0044:0x00000008
0x0048:0x01040000
0x004c::0xFFFFFF
[END]

(note: apparently 0x0040 contains the subvendor and device info - there's that 6485 chip reference) (The other working cards do not output this info into their backup file)


Should I try to generate a configuration file with the 67 lines of 0x00000000 that the working cards display?
Should I try to generate a configuration file with no entries, as per the example file?
Should I try to generate a configuration file resetting 5 lines to 0x00000000?
Or is there a combination of other values that might be required to "flush" the card to the correct configuration?


Just a final thought.....


Thanks!