My experience flashing an H310 to IT firmware with an Asus motherboard, PAL error


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Hi mikedpitt420,

don't worry, the cards are not that easy to brick if you use only the recommended tools here.

Just stay calm, John_M already gave you the right direction.

 

Either get an UEFI shell working or look for another PC that you can use.

With UEFI shell:

Give it a try straight with the P20 firmware.

Use the sas2flash.efi out of the P20 folder as there is none in the M1015 toolset (meanwhile I have it at hand).

There is a 5itp20efi.bat that you could use, but as I just noted, it has a misspelling in there.

The .efi is written sas2flash vs. sas2flsh.exe. Either you correct that in the 5itp20efi.bat or execute the whole command by hand.

sas2flash.efi -l flogp20.txt -o -f 2118it.bin

 

On another PC:

Try the same with the P20 firmware from the H310 tools.

I expect it not to work - just confirm this please (nothing will happen, you just get an error)

Then reboot and use the 5IT.bat from the M1015 tool first and after that the P20.

 

Then don't forget to set the SAS address!

 

Again, don't worry, stay calm, it will work.

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I ran the 5ITP20.BAT and it worked on the older motherboard from a different manufacturer, but I forgot to change 6.bat's contents before I ran it, and only had limited time on the computer. So the incorrect address was written to the card. I will be going up there again in the morning to try 6.BAT from the Toolset_PercH310 to LSI9211_P20.00.07.00\H310_to_LSI directory. I have since corrected 6.BAT and will try it again since it had the wrong SAS address in there (whatever one was already in the file). That is correct yes? I should be able to just run 6.BAT again without having to repeat any other steps correct? I will report back when it's finished.

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No technically I "rebooted". I couldn't run step 5 on my mobo. So I did steps 1-3, then had to shut down because I couldn't run 5ITP20.BAT. I did reboot on my home computer for step 4 but I couldn't run step 5 as it failed with the PAL error.  So I did do a reboot as per the instructions I just couldn't run step 5. I took the flash drive with FreeDOS to my office to perform 5ITP20.BAT and 6.bat. So I did have to powerdown because my mobo wouldn't allow the flashing on top of rebooting as per the instructions. Everything went fine on my home mobo until 5ITP20.BAT. So as long as I'm alright to run 6.bat over again with the correct address I think it will be fine but I will report back. I'm glad that's the case. I got the card for ~ $50 and it does seem new and legit. Even the shipping from China was only 7 days.

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That's a fantastic question. I would assume (maybe I'm totally wrong) that flashing firmware wouldn't work entirely on a knock-off. Maybe I have no idea what I'm talking about. Once this is finished is there some way to test if it is in fact a genuine card and chipset? Like I said earlier I read a whole bunch of this ebay seller's reviews before buying and the only real complaints I could find had to do with things shipping related. Nothing about faulty hardware and he has hundreds of sales rated well. I would myself be interested to see if this is truly what is advertised or if it's a knock-off if it's going to perform differently or give me problems down the line. I'm open to any suggestions and all of you have been exceedingly helpful and I thank you very much for it. This is why I keep referring our NZBGeek members to unRAID. Thanks again :D

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The reason I asked is because I once bought an Intel Pro 1000/ET dual port NIC on eBay from China and then read about the problem of fake Intel cards being so bad that the genuine ones had hologram stickers with codes you could type into Intel's website to confirm their authenticity. Anyway, after a few weeks my card duly arrived in its clear plastic tray inside one of those ubiquitous brown cardboard boxes. The driver CD-ROM looked genuine - i.e. pressed and silk-screen printed, not a CD-R with inkjet printing, and the mounting bracket plus the low profile alternative were of thick, solid metal with sharp, quality legends on them. Everything had the Intel logo but there was no holographic label. Anyway, it turns out that it was new, old stock intended for OEM use and its lack of label was normal. There's a Windows app that was able to interrogate it and confirm its authenticity. But otherwise it seems to me to be extremely difficult to tell the difference.

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I ran the 5ITP20.BAT and it worked on the older motherboard from a different manufacturer, but I forgot to change 6.bat's contents before I ran it, and only had limited time on the computer. So the incorrect address was written to the card. I will be going up there again in the morning to try 6.BAT from the Toolset_PercH310 to LSI9211_P20.00.07.00\H310_to_LSI directory. I have since corrected 6.BAT and will try it again since it had the wrong SAS address in there (whatever one was already in the file). That is correct yes? I should be able to just run 6.BAT again without having to repeat any other steps correct? I will report back when it's finished.

Yes, I understood your problem with the PAL error.

It doesn't matter when, or where (on what machine) you did the 5ITP20.BAT.

 

I would have expected that leap (directly to the P20 firmware) would fail, but according to your experience it does not.

This means, it is not necessary to use a specific version of sas2flsh.exe (from P7) in an intermediate step to override a vendor ID mismatch. That is the case with the DELL cards.

 

 

 

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Success! After running 6.BAT at the office computer with the correct SAS address the card is now in my unRAID server and working. I did however miss the newer "patch" for the preclear script. The plugin wouldn't load at all, it just spun endlessly waiting for information. After the sed based patch to the original preclear script, the drive is now clearing using the old school method of screen + cli. But the card works. Watching it boot, there is no BIOS screen for this card so it seems as if everything worked as it should. Thanks again all of you so much for all of the help. I wish there was some type of way to confirm this is a legit chipset, because for the $$ this card is great despite the problems I had flashing. These problems were due to my motherboard, not the card itself. Couldn't get into a EFI shell. But it works :-D so I'm thrilled for 50$. 

Edited by mikedpitt420
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  • mikedpitt420 changed the title to My experience flashing an H310 to IT firmware with an Asus motherboard, PAL error

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