hellbringer

Should anybody still need the ISO recommended in this old post (I would not recommend buying DELL SaS 6/ir cards in this day and age since they the hardware only supports 2TB drives max) but if you have them, why not use them with proper firmware. It seems the link is down, so it's now available in a 7zipfile here: https://mega.nz/#!UgAXBTRQ!_GH26z-lOIJWB0ol24ryAJ8pXUjrWhd5VE7iB_Q7LL8 And is also linked in this post. I contains firmware for LSI 1068E 3080/3081/3800/3801/3442/3041/3444/31601 for IR and IT mode. It also has the Dell SAS6/iR firmware for this card should you want to flash it back to a Dell card. Name: sas6iflashcd.7z Size: 1599173 bytes (1 MB) CRC64: 1E5447B82A6AE64D SHA256: 4D4BBE0ADF3FCE685D7F7F9F43160EDE0AC970AC38BFBF3C07650ADF184BF435 SHA1: 987EBD913E1CC7886429BCE01B7AD04EDA63BD1E Name: sas6iflashcd.iso Size: 15316992 bytes (14 MB) CRC64: A88C23086536667D SHA256: 31B23B2B2B3716BB1B261687CF376E619AEE491442D9E76AE2188482379E7E29 SHA1: EDA221F4DC933711222EA415FD72D7CA546CB7B8 sas6iflashcd.7z

I bought 2 DELL SaS 6/ir PCIe controllers of eBay, I flashed them using this bootable CD: http://hardforum.com/showpost.php?p=1035949557&postcount=10 to work as a regular LSI 1068E HBA's in TI mode, the board model you want to choose is 3081. (Just make sure you only have 1 LSI card installed at the time you are flashing otherwise you might get the 'ERROR: Failed to initialize PAL. Exiting program') The tricky part is to get them to work in my Gigabyte GA-EP43-DS3 motherboard. They worked fine in my desktop PC with an Asus motherboard (where I did the flashing) but when I plugged them into my server it started beeping and rebooting (11 short - reboot - 3 short - reboot, etc) did some searching and apparently this a common problem with Intel chipset based and especially Gigabyte motherboards with LSI controllers. After changing a lot of BIOS settings and different firmware versions, the problem was still the same. Then I came across this site: http://www.overclock.net/t/359025/perc-5-i-raid-card-tips-and-benchmarks "SMBus Issue with Intel Chipsets These cards are known to have some compatibility issues with Intel chipsets. However, they are known to work with NVIDIA motherboards fine. The issue stems from a System Management Bus (SMBus) conflicting with the motherboard's memory detection. SMBus is simple signal to provide the motherboad some basic device information and control. Symptoms of the conflict includes improperly reported RAM sizes and POST errors. The trick is just to physically disable the SMBus signal. It is composed of just two pins B5 (SMCLK, SMBus clock) and B6 (SMDAT, SMBus data). These two pins need to be covered by tape or nail polish. On the top side of the card, they are the 5th and 6th PCIe pins from the left. You can see the pins covered as seen below: (see also attachment) http://www.overclock.net/attachment.php?attachmentid=78411&stc=1&d=1216366968 " I used Scotch tape (3 layers) to disable pin 5 and 6 and presto: system boots and works fine with no problems. Note: When I used 1 layer of Scotch tape the system gave 1 long and 3 short beeps, but addin another layer solved that. Since this a topic about changing and modifying LSI controllers, why not some physical modifying?

ReneV, you are a mad man! Looks very cool! Not a good setup for me tho, my kid would have his finger in that CPU fan in about 2 seconds....