If you're having problems at the -cleanflash stage try rebooting before attempting.

 

I.e backup the sbr, wipe the BIOS but before doing megarec -cleanflash 0 reboot.

 

You won't see the card BIOS but you might find you can then cleanflash successfully.

 

I do this on my asus p6t to get it past that stage.

 

Once cleanflashed, continue with the instructions as normal (i.e reboot then us 5it.bat or similar).

 

I've done two cards this way and was bashing my head off the wall at the -cleanflash stage until I figured this out.

 

Apologies if this has already been mentioned in this thread - it's a big un! I posted this because I did a second card this afternoon and had to remember it all over again, so posted on the interweb for posterity

Nope, its has not be meantioned before. Thanks for sharing your findings as it may help others with particular motherboards.

Unfortunately I've now hit a brick wall in getting two of these running. I've never been able to enter the card's BIOS on any system I've tried (inc the one that flashed them).

 

Now when I have two cards inserted in my unraid system only one HBA is detected alongside an 'Adapter configuration may have changed, reconfiguration is suggested!" during the drive scan in the cards BIOS.

 

I preusme this is because I now have a second card and they need tickled to play nice with each other.

 

However as I can't enter the bios..I can't really do much

 

Any ideas?

The first cards bios must post in order to marry the two (only one bios runs when multipule cards are used, that is why it is very important they all have the same Bios/FW flash on them).

 

You will need to find a system that you can get into the cards Bios with... that may or may not help (as you would be placing them back into this system, which by the way what MB are you using, so other can let you know if they had success). As at the very least it needs to set the card(s) order.

Got there in the end..

 

I have a uefi bios and, it turns out, you have an additional hoop to jump through.

 

When you press ctrl+c / ctrl+h to enter the bios of the m1015 nothing much happens - but the server appears to soft reboot and you get the system BIOS screen again. At this point you can go into the system BIOS as normal and you now have a new boot option called something like 'option rom' and you can then tell the system bios to boot from that - which gets you into the 1015 option rom / bios.

 

What a pain, but it worked. From there I just added the second card into the ordering within the m1015 BIOS and that's it!

 

Thanks for the help, your tip on setting the order made me quite comfortable that I was doing the right thing!

 

This is on an asrock z68 extreme4 board.

Sweet congrats, and thanks for sharing, may help others as well!

Following your procedure I did the trick and my branded IBM ServeRAID M1015 became an unbranded LSI 9211-8i with P11 revision.

Now my new adapter is on a ZFS storage server together with 2 OCZ Agility 3 60GB SSD Drives and unbranded IBM BR10i with 6 2TB 3Gb/s WD RE4.

 

Attached you find the sbr file collected during the flash procedure.

 

madburg ask me anything else, if you need it.

 

Thank you.

 

Regards

 

-----------------------

 

RulezMore!

Failing to plan is planning a failure.

SBRM1015.zip

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?

Nice hardware hack!  Thanks for sharing.

Madburg, thanks for a fantastic guide!

 

I got a new pulled M1015 from EBay, plugged it in, attempted to flash, swapped mobo's, flashed, reinstalled, viola!

 

The motherboard in my UNRAID is an Asus P8B WS with the 0805 BIOS, it recognized the card and let me erase it but I got the notorious PAL error when I tried to flash the BIOS.  I pulled the card and put it into my desktop machine with an ASUS M4A89GTD PRO/USB3 mobo and it flashed with no issues.

 

I reinstalled the card in my UNRAID machine, upgraded to 5.0B11 and it's doing a parity check at about 120MB/SEC.

 

SBR attached and again, thanks for the outstanding work!

IBM_M1015.zip

I bought a IBM ServeRAID M1015 from Ebay and the sticker on it says SAS9220-8i.  I've searched, but I don't see that one mentioned in this thread.  Which flash procedure should I follow with this card?  And what is the difference between the P10 and P11 files?

RockDog, mine had the same sticker.  Right or wrong I used the instructions for the M1015 and SAS2008 chipset.  Worked like a champ!

 

I used the P10 download.

Thanks.  I did the same and it seemed to work.  I do have a problem where I can't get into the configuration.  When it boots, I hit ctrl+C when prompted and it says it's loading the configuration utility, then it says configuration will launch after initialization.  Then a line pops up for a split second and, as best I can tell, it says something about boot ROM successfully loaded and then the computer continues booting.  The configuration utility never opens.  I've tried many times.  I don't have any drives connected if that matters (I'm waiting for my cable to arrive).

I had the same problem using EUFI bios.  It would say it the card would enter configuration after initialization then go to the bios on my NICs, back to the system bios and then boot.

 

I CTRL+C'd for the card, then F8'd to configure bios and it opened the card configuration before it opened the bios.

 

Worked for me, YMMV.

Thanks for the tip, but unfortunately, it didn't work for me.  It just went into the BIOS setting and I never got the LSI configuration utility.

P12 firmware for LSI-2008 based HBAs is available from LSI here: http://www.lsi.com/downloads/Public/Host%20Bus%20Adapters/Host%20Bus%20Adapters%20Common%20Files/SAS_SATA_6G_P12/9211_8i_Package_P12_IR_IT_Firmware_BIOS_for_MSDOS_Windows.zip

P12 firmware for LSI-2008 based HBAs is available from LSI here: http://www.lsi.com/downloads/Public/Host%20Bus%20Adapters/Host%20Bus%20Adapters%20Common%20Files/SAS_SATA_6G_P12/9211_8i_Package_P12_IR_IT_Firmware_BIOS_for_MSDOS_Windows.zip

 

I have been running P12 on my IBM M1015 for about a week now.  No issues so far.

 

I have a zip file with all the files to upgrade from DOS here:  http://unraid.zeron.ca/other/upgrade-M1015-P12.zip

Thanks.  I did the same and it seemed to work.  I do have a problem where I can't get into the configuration.  When it boots, I hit ctrl+C when prompted and it says it's loading the configuration utility, then it says configuration will launch after initialization.  Then a line pops up for a split second and, as best I can tell, it says something about boot ROM successfully loaded and then the computer continues booting.  The configuration utility never opens.  I've tried many times.  I don't have any drives connected if that matters (I'm waiting for my cable to arrive).

 

Anyone have any ideas on how I can get into the config for the card?  Would it have anything to do with not having a drive connected?  I did the same thing before I flashed the card.  I was hoping that might fix the problem.  Could this be a sign of a defective card?

Thanks.  I did the same and it seemed to work.  I do have a problem where I can't get into the configuration.  When it boots, I hit ctrl+C when prompted and it says it's loading the configuration utility, then it says configuration will launch after initialization.  Then a line pops up for a split second and, as best I can tell, it says something about boot ROM successfully loaded and then the computer continues booting.  The configuration utility never opens.  I've tried many times.  I don't have any drives connected if that matters (I'm waiting for my cable to arrive).

 

Anyone have any ideas on how I can get into the config for the card?  Would it have anything to do with not having a drive connected?  I did the same thing before I flashed the card.  I was hoping that might fix the problem.  Could this be a sign of a defective card?

 

I had this issue when I had more than 1 controller card. After I pulled the other controller card, it would go into the card bios

I didn't have any drives connected to it either

 

I was a little confused when I first installed my controller card - first, you must hit the ctrl+c as the machine is powered up, then you have to select the 'bios' option at the normal prompt.

Thanks.  I'll try both of those when my server is finished with a parity check.

OK guys, I give up I have bought two of these

http://www.ebay.com/itm/190624631987?ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1497.l2649#ht_1748wt_1398.

Tried in dos

Windows 7

ESXI

Not sure what else there is left to try.  It seems like every tie I make head way I get hit with the dreaded PAL error.  I have officially run out of boards to attempt it on.  I am unable to flash them with any of the 5 mother boards I have.  I am starting to pull whats left of my hair out.  At this point I am willing to pay to have some one do them for me.  Any takers?

 

OK guys, I give up I have bought two of these

http://www.ebay.com/itm/190624631987?ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1497.l2649#ht_1748wt_1398.

Tried in dos

Windows 7

ESXI

Not sure what else there is left to try.  It seems like every tie I make head way I get hit with the dreaded PAL error.  I have officially run out of boards to attempt it on.  I am unable to flash them with any of the 5 mother boards I have.  I am starting to pull whats left of my hair out.  At this point I am willing to pay to have some one do them for me.  Any takers?

 

what boards have you tried it on?

also where are you located? if your in Chicago, I'll do it for free.

OK guys, I give up I have bought two of these

http://www.ebay.com/itm/190624631987?ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1497.l2649#ht_1748wt_1398.

Tried in dos

Windows 7

ESXI

Not sure what else there is left to try.  It seems like every tie I make head way I get hit with the dreaded PAL error.  I have officially run out of boards to attempt it on.  I am unable to flash them with any of the 5 mother boards I have.  I am starting to pull whats left of my hair out.  At this point I am willing to pay to have some one do them for me.  Any takers?

 

what boards have you tried it on?

also where are you located? if your in Chicago, I'll do it for free.

 

Located in DC.  I have tried with a Asus P8Z68, SuperX9CFM-F two dells and and older asus that slips my mind at the moment.  Really busting my chops at this time.  I would be willing to send them to you are are up for it.

 

 

I finally go into my board's BIOS config.  Removing another SATA controller card I had installed and disabling all onboard HDD controllers didn't fix it either.  It wasn't until I removed the flash drive that I was finally able to get in.   

 

Anyhow, now I'm a little uncertain because my config screen looks nothing like that one in the OP.  It has a Boot Order field, but not a Boot Support field.  How do I set this up properly?  Here's a pic:

 

IMAG0006 by rockdawg2232, on Flickr