I thought to upgrade my unRAID server this weekend.

 

Purchased a new motherboard:

 

JetWay JHZ03-GT-V2-LF AM3 AMD 880G HDMI Micro ATX AMD Motherboard

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813153201&Tpk=JetWay%20JHZ03-GT-V2-LF

 

I have bee using a Promise SATA300 TX4 card for one HDD in my old MB. I am using on-board ports for the rest.

 

So, to cut to the quick, I pulled the old MB, installed the new MB, and swapped the card over. Plugged everything in, and no boot. It posts, sees all the drives, sees the TX4, but when it comes to time to boot... nothing.

 

I can pull the card, and it boots right away, to unRAID. With the card, no boot. I have tried a different TX4 card (I have two), still no-go. I have not swapped the old MB back to verify that everything works, that was going to be the last resort.

 

In the BIOS, there are options to configure how PCI card (IDE) cards load. Until now, all the motherboards I have worked with just worked, no configurations needed. Not really familiar with this stuff, but I have tried several options, still no go.

 

If it helps, the BIOS stuff looks like this:

 

Offboard PCI/ISA IDE Card:

    Auto

    PCI Slot 1

    PCI Slot 2

(If either slot 1 or slot 2 are selected, then these extra options appear).

 

Offboard PCI IDE Primary IRQ:

    INTA

    INTB

    INTC

    INTD

    Hardwired

Offboard PCI IDE Secondary:

    INTA

    INTB

    INTC

    INTD

    Hardwired

 

Am I barking up the wrong tree?

 

Frankly, I am running out of ideas.

 

Has anyone else run into this?

 

I know that new MB works, I was running if for about 5 days, to burn it in. I know (well, pretty sure the TX4 card(s)) work, they were working until I brought down the server. I am fairly certain that the issue is getting to MB to load the card correctly, but I am not sure what configuration(s) I need to do.

 

Any suggestions would be welcome.

 

TIA

 

Bruce

So, to cut to the quick, I pulled the old MB, installed the new MB, and swapped the card over. Plugged everything in, and no boot. It posts, sees all the drives, sees the TX4, but when it comes to time to boot... nothing.

 

This makes me think that the boot sequence is hanging when trying to find a drive on the TX4 to boot from.

 

I would try playing with the boot order - can you select USB boot first, before any other hard drive (or even disable everything other than usb)?  Is there a configuration on the TX4 to disable booting?

I have specified in the bios to boot from the USB stick.

 

I have also 'disabled' all the other HDD in the boot list. I will go back in tomorrow morning and make sure that the drive on the RX4 is disabled, just in case. Right now it is getting late for me, and I am getting bleary-eyed, I don't want to make any mistakes, or do something dumb.

 

Thanks for the suggestion.

 

Bruce

OK, strangely enough, I have this going.

 

Pure shotgun method, I changed the BIOS setting one at a time, on ANYTHING that had ANYTHING to do with PCI and how it was handled. I picked a setting, changed it, rebooted, if it did not work, rebooted, changed it back, and changed another option.

 

Spin of the wheel and...

 

The winner is...

 

Allocate IRQ to PCI VGA!

 

Changed from the default YES, to NO. Worked first time.

 

Not completely sure why. The TX4 is NOT a PCI VGA card, and should not report itself so, and, doesn't it grab an IRQ anyway?? (It would have to to work, right?!?)

 

Well, from here the news is all good. The array came up with two drive miss-assigned, swapped them on the Devices page, and all lights are green. Houston, we are go!!

 

Without this one setting, the whole process would have taken about an hour. I did some cable management, sort of clean things up, so that is the reason it would have taken so long.

 

Bruce

Glad you got it working.  I believe what that BIOS setting means is that the motherboard is reserving the PCI port for VGA (video) cards only.  Other motherboards call this PEG mode (or maybe that only applies to PCIe slots, I'm not sure).  Most people are using this Jetway board with newer PCIe cards, so I don't believe this issue has come up yet.  Glad you found a fix.