Supermicro curse strikes again

[ratdude747]

Re: Supermicro curse strikes again

Crap, lost the orginal chip.

I'll probably order a replacement... Topcat, you need not risk the life of your board for my board... as then we'd have TWO dead ones.

edit- ordered... Wish me luck... if not, Tocat may get a free backup chip for his board (and I'll have a partial system to do something with )

[stj]

Re: Supermicro curse strikes again

i'm amazed that nobody statesside on this forum has a programmer.
i could prog a few, but i dont know what the postage would be.

[Mad_Professor]

Re: Supermicro curse strikes again

i'm amazed that nobody statesside on this forum has a programmer.
i could prog a few, but i dont know what the postage would be.

5 dollars and 3 weeks.

[brethin]

Re: Supermicro curse strikes again

i'm amazed that nobody statesside on this forum has a programmer.
i could prog a few, but i dont know what the postage would be.

I have never needed a programmer to flash what I need flashed and I flash about 6 times a month. Rarely do I need to remove or replace the chip and when I do it is socketed so I just use a older motherboard to force flash it with whatever bios it needs. I guess in a way my old asus p4p800 is my programmer.

[brethin]

Re: Supermicro curse strikes again

Crap, lost the orginal chip.

I'll probably order a replacement... Topcat, you need not risk the life of your board for my board... as then we'd have TWO dead ones.

edit- ordered... Wish me luck... if not, Tocat may get a free backup chip for his board (and I'll have a partial system to do something with )

You don't need the original chip. Send me one of the others you have (when you ship that hard drive) that you said were the same and I will flash it with the factory bios and send it back to you.

[ratdude747]

Re: Supermicro curse strikes again

You don't need the original chip. Send me one of the others you have (when you ship that hard drive) that you said were the same and I will flash it with the factory bios and send it back to you.

Already ordered a chip (preflashed)... so unless I get a dud, I won't need another chip flashed.

[brethin]

Re: Supermicro curse strikes again

Already ordered a chip (preflashed)... so unless I get a dud, I won't need another chip flashed.

Doesn't hurt to have a backup, ESP if you are trying to mod one. Anyway when you ship the hard drive if you have any chips you need flashed just send them with it and I will make you some backups.

[ratdude747]

Re: Supermicro curse strikes again

Doesn't hurt to have a backup, ESP if you are trying to mod one. Anyway when you ship the hard drive if you have any chips you need flashed just send them with it and I will make you some backups.

will do... may be a while, busy weekend. Hopefully no more than a couple days.

[ratdude747]

Re: Supermicro curse strikes again

chip came in, fixed it. They used a different model from what I was trying to force flash... which makes me think I was trying the wrong model.

I may try hotflashing... maybe.

[ratdude747]

Re: Supermicro curse strikes again

Fuck it...

It's unstable as hell... won't escape POST with 8GB installed (tried 2 sets of modules)... and with less (even 4 modules worth, say 5GB total) it will boot half of the time (POST hangs the other half).

Also, the chip included isn't flashable (model isn't reconized by every pheonix flash DOS utility I've tried) and hotflashing was no good (some file block was missing?). They used what appears to be an off branded 49F004T for the chip...

IDK if it's humidy or what... the basement is pretty humid.


Any suggestions or is this thing a goner?

[RJARRRPCGP]

Re: Supermicro curse strikes again

Fuck it...

It's unstable as hell... won't escape POST with 8GB installed (tried 2 sets of modules)... and with less (even 4 modules worth, say 5GB total) it will boot half of the time (POST hangs the other half).

Also, the chip included isn't flashable (model isn't reconized by every pheonix flash DOS utility I've tried) and hotflashing was no good (some file block was missing?). They used what appears to be an off branded 49F004T for the chip...

IDK if it's humidy or what... the basement is pretty humid.


Any suggestions or is this thing a goner?

Don't give up yet. It also could be the DIMM contacts. First thing to do is give the board a Topcat-style cleaning!

[ratdude747]

Re: Supermicro curse strikes again

Don't give up yet. It also could be the DIMM contacts. First thing to do is give the board a Topcat-style cleaning!

before all this it was working fine...

[kc8adu]

Re: Supermicro curse strikes again

were you wearing the right shirt?

Yup, I had another supermicro die... this time it's my X5DAL-TG2.

What happened was I on a SLIC 2.1 mod streak and like some other units (Including my Tyan Thunder K8WE) I flashed a modded bios I rolled my self.

What happened was the BIOS installed correctly but then on reboot it froze during the really slow first boot (before optimizing settings)... I hard resetted, now it spins fans.

I suspect it's a faulty BIOS chip, as in the past it's:

-randomly reset settings, even on a known good (brand new) CMOS battery
-radomly died for a few hours, fixed after time (or reseating memory)

Would ebaying a replacement (pre-programmed) for $16 be the way to go, or is there a low cost (<$50) programmer out there for such PLCC chips (I have dead boards to source chips)? Or does this not even sound like a bad flash chip?

[ratdude747]

Re: Supermicro curse strikes again

were you wearing the right shirt?

The warranty was voided a LONG time ago... that shirt doesn't do the crap I pull justice!

hack hack hack hack hack...

[stj]

Re: Supermicro curse strikes again

http://www.rom.by/book/Uniflash

[ratdude747]

Re: Supermicro curse strikes again

Tried uniflash... found out the chip supplied was a 128x4K chip... and not the correct size for the rom! WTF?

After some googling, I found out this:

4 or 8 Mbits of flash memory for platform
code/data nonvolatile storage
- Symmetrically blocked, 64-KB memory
sections
- Available in 8-Mbit (Intel 82802AC) and 4-
Mbit (Intel 82802AB) densities
- Automated byte program and block erase via
an integrated Write State Machine (WSM)

The bolded model is my stock chip.

So, those are the specs I need in a chip... looks like a digikey order is needed (so I can uniflash a proper chip).

[stj]

Re: Supermicro curse strikes again

same capacity.
126x4=512
4m/8=512

just different sector size

[ratdude747]

Re: Supermicro curse strikes again

same capacity.
126x4=512
4m/8=512

just different sector size

Yup, confirmed, as I desoldered an intel chip from a junk p4 gateway board and tried it... all the "stock" flash tools see it when hot flashed (and program it) but the result is a non-booting system (boot block issue?). Uniflash however doesn't work as the .rom is 3kb above 512kb... and it sees the image as the wrong size (I added trailing zeroes to make it 1mb and tried it on some junk 1mb chips... uniflash liked it but it wouldn't obviously boot)

[stj]

Re: Supermicro curse strikes again

round 2
DING DING
http://www.flashrom.org/Flashrom

[ratdude747]

Re: Supermicro curse strikes again

round 2
DING DING
http://www.flashrom.org/Flashrom

Same issue. 3kb file difference (the image being larger) trips it up...

There must be some headers added by pheonix or something... I checked, it's not 3kb of 0's at the end of the file.