Ratdude's Main Rig V6

[momaka]

Re: Ratdude's Main Rig V6

Even my office system (X7DWA-N), which is a slow POSTer, by the time the monitors wake up, its rolling through the SAS controller init.

Hehe, on that note, I have a really old (1997) 17" Dell CRT monitor that takes about 20 seconds before anything shows up on its screen once powered ON. By the time the screen warms up enough for a picture to show, my PCs often have already loaded and are waiting at the LogOn/password screen.
Then again, after making it to 20 years without any repairs and still working correctly once it warms up, that CRT monitor owes me NOTHING!

Back in the days when a splash would actually show, I too disable splash screens, I always liked seeing the system specs & memtest more.

It's also useful when the system gets stuck on something during POST, like a hard drive - in that case, it's useful to know which one. I hate starring at a Splash Screen forever and wondering why the PC is not POSTing.

I've already ordered Chip Quik and a fresh chip...

Chip Quik is nice, but... by the time you've ordered it a few times, you might have as well put that money on a cheap China hot air station. For things like small IO chips and even the LPC/SIO, you don't need a bottom heater. The hot air will do it just fine.

But in this case, try the BIOS recovery option as TC suggested. Worth a shot before attacking the board with your soldering iron.

[ratdude747]

Re: Ratdude's Main Rig V6

Fixed!

USB method: Fiddly, couldn't make it work. Would give beep codes for file not found and file read error every time.

IDE CD method: Didn't work. Might be bad cable. F*ck it.

Serial method: Once I drove to my parents house to retrieve a null modem cable, I was able to make it work use extraPuTTY on my old venerable Dell Latitude D630 (the NVS 135 one you all gave me shit about years ago, yup, still runs and sees daily use as a bedside loafer laptop). Worked great, no worries. She's alive again.

The damn BIOS chip hasn't even shipped out yet; It and the chipquik will go on the shelf in case I ever have a chip fry. Now to get all my cards and crap re-installed (had it stripped down during debugging).

[Topcat]

Re: Ratdude's Main Rig V6

Leave it to me for the winning idea... ..now leave shit alone!

[ratdude747]

Re: Ratdude's Main Rig V6

Leave it to me for the winning idea... ..now leave shit alone!

If it aint broke, let me tinker!

[momaka]

Re: Ratdude's Main Rig V6

Leave it to me for the winning idea... ..now leave shit alone!

Agreed.

If you really want to abuse that motherboard, let me know. I have the perfect power supply for that - a crappy RaidMax RX-380K. Call now and you will receive a *FREE* pack of unblown used Sacon FZ caps with said offer.

[ratdude747]

Re: Ratdude's Main Rig V6

Finally installed MegaRAID storage manager... nice of Broadcom to label it as "archive" (no current version, lol).

It appears my BBU is not dead or dying.... 663mAh of the designed 675mAh according to the utility.

[Topcat]

Re: Ratdude's Main Rig V6

if that batt is good, consider yourself lucky!! The batteries dying are usually the reason the controller is phased out.

[ratdude747]

Re: Ratdude's Main Rig V6

if that batt is good, consider yourself lucky!! The batteries dying are usually the reason the controller is phased out.

I thought the #1 reason was servers getting parted out in bulk?

[Topcat]

Re: Ratdude's Main Rig V6

I thought the #1 reason was servers getting parted out in bulk?

Broken things? age? ...or...well...dead raid controller BBU batts? Either way, its someone else's old junk.

[ratdude747]

Re: Ratdude's Main Rig V6

The other night I moved her to my new home (and a new desk):

[ratdude747]

Re: Ratdude's Main Rig V6

I've tried an upgrade... and well, I've been given the bad luck brian treatment.

Idea: Obtain 2 EVGA 970's and SLI them... After all my chipset supports SLI, right?

Well, I've had 3 fails in a row:

1. Screwed up and got an SC and an SSC... not SLI compatible due to unbalanced clock speeds. Luckily I got a killer deal on another SSC, and sold Topcat the unneeded SC for peanuts to cut my losses (broke even).
2. Screwed up and ordered an SLI bridge too tall... misread/mismeasured something somewhere. Doh!
3.New SLI bridge came in... installed it... and no SLI option. It seems from further research that while the X58 chipset I have is SLI compatible, the X8DAH+-F board I'm running is not. There supposedly is a patch out there... but the site who made it is gone and I doubt anything archived has 970 support (let alone on the latest drivers).

I'm also seeing mixed results on whether newer SM intel boards support SLI... dunno. I do know many AMD boards did (such as the H8DAE-2 I have sitting), but that's a direction I'm not sure I want to go. How much more money do I want to burn?

Stupid ratdude ****ing things up as always

[Topcat]

Re: Ratdude's Main Rig V6

I ran into this when I tried SLI'ing a pair of 9800GT's I had on a X8SAX, x58 chipset....it should have done it....but it would not do it. I'm beginning to think Supermicro just thinks SLI is the anti-Christ!

[ChaosLegionnaire]

Re: Ratdude's Main Rig V6

umm no actually... contrary to popular belief, this is a nvidia control freak problem. back during the p4, athlon xp and athlon 64 days, nvidia only wants sli to work on their nforce chipset mobos. then nvidia stopped making chipsets. lga775 was the last platform that nvidia made chipsets for, so sli should work on non-nforce chipset mobos. otherwise why do video cards now still have sli connectors? might as well stop sli altogether...

so this is a nvidia control freak problem where they only want sli to work on certain mobos. the anysli hack where u can enable sli to work on any mobo is one prime example and proof of nvidia's control freak problem. too bad nvidia's lawyers shut down the anysli hack site and removed all traces of it from the web...

if u like multi-gpu systems, amd crossfire is the way to go. amd crossfire doesnt have the control freak problem that nvidia have with sli. now lets all spread the word that if u are buying nvidia, buy a single monolithic gpu rather than two cheaper ones in sli. dont get fooled and bite into nvidia's control freak problem!

[diif]

Re: Ratdude's Main Rig V6

No, It's a licensing thing. SLI licences were more expensive than Crossfire. Supermicro make/sell server boards so didn't pay for an SLI license.
Yes Nvidia only want SLI working on those boards where the manufacturers have paid. There were AMD motherboards with SLI back in 2011.

[Topcat]

Re: Ratdude's Main Rig V6

No, It's a licensing thing. SLI licences were more expensive than Crossfire. Supermicro make/sell server boards so didn't pay for an SLI license.
Yes Nvidia only want SLI working on those boards where the manufacturers have paid. There were AMD motherboards with SLI back in 2011.

That makes sense....but figure this one out. The Supermicro X8SAX doesn't support SLI apparently, but the Supermicro C7X58, which is THE SAME BOARD minus the 64-bit PCI slots DOES support SLI..... It even uses the same BIOS.

https://cdn.badcaps-static.com/pdfs/...79b5ba3656.pdf

They obviously paid the bill for one but not the other.... That one is kind of mind boggling.

[diif]

Re: Ratdude's Main Rig V6

The specs read like a high end gaming PC at the time, i7, 1600Mhz memory, perhaps someone figured it might be worth paying for the license.
Companies selling a device that's fully featured but only allowing access to the part the consumer has paid for is not a new thing. If it is only a matter of soldering on the missing PCI slot/s then they have created two products for two different markets with the minimum of fuss and effort on their part.

[RJARRRPCGP]

Re: Ratdude's Main Rig V6

"X58" is a subdirectory of "Core2Duo", LOL

It's post-Core2, FYI Looks like Super Micro went bonkers!

[Topcat]

Re: Ratdude's Main Rig V6

"X58" is a subdirectory of "Core2Duo", LOL

It's post-Core2, FYI Looks like Super Micro went bonkers!

I wouldn't say that....more along the lines of what diif said... They aren't targeting the gamer crowd, and hence, not a lot of demand for SLI support amongst their target audience. I was only doing it to tinker around....I had no intention of actually using that system for anything gaming and/or productive.

[ratdude747]

Re: Ratdude's Main Rig V6

No, It's a licensing thing. SLI licences were more expensive than Crossfire. Supermicro make/sell server boards so didn't pay for an SLI license.
Yes Nvidia only want SLI working on those boards where the manufacturers have paid. There were AMD motherboards with SLI back in 2011.

Ah.

That's the same conclusion I was coming to.

It seems some of the later SM boards do support SLI... what I may do is keep the other GPU as a spare (the killer Zotac 970 that came out has another home, which I haven't posted about yet)... and sometime in the future build up one of those boards in a new build. Dunno. As cool as the H8DAE-2 is, it's a bit old (nforce pro 3000, 2000 series opterons with DDR2) compared to this. Or I find yet another GPU for here and move the cards to that board in yet another new build with no purpose. I have options... and they all suck in one way or another.

I did read of people BIOS modding the liscenses in... but that screams trouble. I've already fought the BIOS gods and lost on this board, and I don't quite have the cojones to go there, especially since it's not a well documented mod and I'm not an x86 assembly expert.

[Topcat]

Re: Ratdude's Main Rig V6

I did read of people BIOS modding the liscenses in... but that screams trouble. I've already fought the BIOS gods and lost on this board, and I don't quite have the cojones to go there, especially since it's not a well documented mod and I'm not an x86 assembly expert.

Maybe on some boards a modded BIOS would cure it....but using my above example, it appears more along the lines of something hardwired in the board, in the chipset perhaps, or just some strange 'mystery component' stuck somewhere on the board...as my example is a pair of boards with a few hard variations but they use the same BIOS.....one will SLI, one won't....again, using the same BIOS.... I'm not sure how the firmware hackers would address that one.....but I'm certainly not an expert on the subject.