What board have you successfully flashed an M1015 in?

D

DuronClocker

[H]ard|Gawd
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Mar 12, 2004
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Since it doesn't look like I'll be able to flash an M1015 in an E-350-based board (I've seen 2-3 different boards that failed, and no success stories), I don't have any other use to build it until at least middle of next year.

With that said, I could definitely find some room to have a spare desktop in the house if I can toss one together cheaply enough. What motherboards have you guys used to successfully flash an M1015?

I don't care if it is AMD/Intel as I'll be needing to buy a CPU as well. Doesn't need to be anything power-efficient or fast.. I'd prefer if it can use DDR3 as I've got some of that laying around whereas I don't have any DDR2.

I guess that means I'd be looking for a later LGA775/AM2+ board or newer. An mATX Z68 board would be stellar as I could upgrade my HTPC to Z68, OEM SB Cellies are cheap, and I've got a couple stock LGA1155 coolers laying around.

Newer Xeon setups are out of the question as it'd likely be over my budget.
 
You might be able to find someone on the forum willing to flash it for you or cross-ship a flashed card, unless you want to buy the equipment anyways.
 
I've flashed all my M1015s and BR10is in an Asus M3A78-T, using a FreeDOS USB thumb drive. That board has become my unofficial dedicated testbed/firmware flashing board.
 
s0rce said:
You might be able to find someone on the forum willing to flash it for you or cross-ship a flashed card, unless you want to buy the equipment anyways.
Click to expand...

I do have an offer to do so actually from the seller of the card. It is definitely an option, but I'd also like to have the ability to do it myself if I need to flash it again down the road for some reason.

I can definitely find a use for an extra system part-time.. i.e. having a spare computer for when we have family/friends visit us from out of state.

Something like that M3A78-T mentioned below is definitely something I'd consider, though I'd prefer DDR3. I wonder if something like an mATX M4A785 would work.
 
I think the biggest issue is that the DOS and maybe Windows flashing tools don't work on UEFI boards. But in theory there is an LSI flash/configuration utility which somehow works in some sort of UEFI console.

I only have one UEFI board so far, an Asus P8B WS, so I haven't spent the time to figure it out. I did try flashing my M1015 on the P8B WS, using the windows tools, and they didn't see the card at all.

Are the E-350s all UEFI?
 
Did not work in: Asus RIVE, Asus P4K, Gigabyte EX58-UD5

Worked in: Asus Maximums Formula X38
 
Flashed mine for the first time on a Gigabyte GA-P55-UD3 in DOS and after that I updated BIOS and firmware in ESXi 5 on a Supermicro X9SCA-F. The latter I think is an EFI board, so perhaps it might be of interest to do the flashing inside of ESXi (or some other OS) rather than DOS.
 
Hm, I wonder if it would work if I set up a DOS VM and passed the card through to that. I suppose I could give it a shot and see if it recognizes it using the VM's virtual BIOS.

EDIT: This didn't work. Passed through the card fine, and didn't get the PAL initialization error, so I thought I was golden. Instead I ended up getting "Chip is in RESET state. Attempting Host Boot..." and then received "ERROR: Firmware Host Boot Failed!" I didn't have very high hopes for this method but figured I would give it a shot.
 
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Worked in: Asus M4A88TD-M. They're pretty cheap and a basic AM3 CPU isn't much either...
 
That M4A88TD-M sounds pretty close to what I'd be looking for. I'm debating picking up an open box M4A88T-I and trying my luck with that. I suppose I could end up making an HTPC out of that and a Sempron 145 ($28 @ SuperBiiz), but I'd have to figure out some low-profile cooler. Then I'd have found a use for the 4GB of DDR3 SODIMMs I've got laying around too!
 
DuronClocker said:
Hm, I wonder if it would work if I set up a DOS VM and passed the card through to that. I suppose I could give it a shot and see if it recognizes it using the VM's virtual BIOS.

EDIT: This didn't work. Passed through the card fine, and didn't get the PAL initialization error, so I thought I was golden. Instead I ended up getting "Chip is in RESET state. Attempting Host Boot..." and then received "ERROR: Firmware Host Boot Failed!" I didn't have very high hopes for this method but figured I would give it a shot.
Click to expand...

Why not use sas2flash in ESXi instead? You have to disable passthrough for the flashing procedure though, otherwise ESXi won't see the card.
 
tocket said:
Why not use sas2flash in ESXi instead? You have to disable passthrough for the flashing procedure though, otherwise ESXi won't see the card.
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That is what I first tried, and it definitely did not work. I'm pretty sure that was the first time I ran into the 'unable to initialize PAL' or however it is worded.
 
MSI Z68A-GD65 (G3) in the second Gfx slot, although only the first steps including erasing the flash worked. sas2flash.exe in DOS would throw the dreaded PAL error.

sas2flash.efi in the EFI shell then worked fine, though.
 
Blah, my H61M-E33 manual mentions EFI Shell (even has an image of the option), but my last page lacks the option. MSI's manuals suck. I've sent them an email to see if they can help me out here.. maybe there's a particular BIOS version that had it. Looks like the BIOS version in the manual is from before the board was officially released.

Good to know though that their Z68-based boards have an EFI shell available. I actually just stumbled across a review stating that their E350 board also has an EFI shell.

I'll see what MSI says about my current board. If they can't help me, maybe my next decision will be between trying out their E350 board, or upgrading my HTPC to one of their Z68's and holding onto the H61 and picking up an entry-level LGA1155 for the secondary HTPC/guest system.
 
Don't MSI boards have a key combination to unlock advanced stuff in the BIOS ?
 
After working with MSI's tech support, they ended up coming to the conclusion that the BIOS chip on production boards was smaller than the BIOS chip on the ES version used to make the manual, so there wasn't enough room for some features (EFI shell being one of them).

TCM said:
MSI Z68A-GD65 (G3) in the second Gfx slot, although only the first steps including erasing the flash worked. sas2flash.exe in DOS would throw the dreaded PAL error.

sas2flash.efi in the EFI shell then worked fine, though.
Click to expand...

I ended up buying an MSI Z68MA-ED55 from Newegg. I attempted a DOS flash again with no luck but then downloaded the .efi file and flashed from the EFI shell. Worked perfectly as expected.

A bit bummed that MSI's manual lied to me, but it really isn't much of a surprise.. after all, the manual still says that HT requires a Pentium 4 with HT support :rolleyes: At least their tech support guy I worked with actually seemed somewhat competent and quick to answer my emails.
 
Tried a bunch of my older boards to much headache, and just figured "what the heck" and popped it in my newer gaming PC, and it flashed just fine, and seemed to work as well. Windows installed drivers upon next boot, but I didn't attach any drives to it. I planned on putting it in my old pieced-together "server" with Abit IP35 mobo, but it doesn't seem to even recognize the card.:rolleyes:

Does work in:
Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD3 (F6e bios)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128514
 
Daemonfly, are you able to flash the m1015 in the GA-990FXA-UD3?

I'm trying to decide if I should replace my e5200 + Abit IP35 Pro with a 1045t + GA-990FXA-UD3 (also hoping to upgrade to ECC RAM).

My m1015 came pre-flashed to IT mode - 9211 and currently works OK but I don't think I could flash it If I needed to.

Additionally the GA-990FXA-UD3 would allow me to put the m1015 in a faster PCIe slot, right now it is in a physical x16 but electrical x4.
 
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