No love for SuperMicro C7Q67 (BIOS fix)

[pfrcom]

I bought two SuperMicro C7Q67 as "won't start" condition, thinking it's impossible to kill a SuperMicro

Well, they wouldn't even power on, much less boot

After blood, sweat & tears, I got the first to boot with my i5-2500K processor

SuperMicro don't publish a Supported Processors list, and hoping to use a G1610 processor, I updated BIOS C7Q673_628

Used a USB key booting into DOS, everything went fine, finally powered off then cleared CMOS according to ReadMe instructions

Powered back on to get six beeps, then a CATERR LED lighting up

Neither that beep code nor CATERR LED are documented in the C7Q67 User's Manual

I've tried everything I can think of, can't get past CATERR


The second C7Q67 is, if possible, even more frustrating

Got it to power on, to get a blank screen

If I remove memory - a pair of Hynix modules on their Tested Memory list - I get five short beeps and one long, meaning no memory

FWIW, a POST card in the PCI slot, shows a status of 4B


I thought SuperMicro was a brand you could trust

Or have they gone like Asus, with Sudden Death Syndrome exacerbated by sh**ty documentation ?

[ReverendJones]

Re: No love for SuperMicro C7Q67

The CATERR LED is driven by the CAT_ERR_N signal and indicates a "Catastrophic Error". The 6 beeps indicate "Flash update has failed".

Perhaps you can try a BIOS Recovery as specified in Appendix C of the user manual.

[pfrcom]

Re: No love for SuperMicro C7Q67

Thanks for your feedback

The CATERR LED is driven by the CAT_ERR_N signal and indicates a "Catastrophic Error".

I've followed a number of wild goose chases related to that error, on various forums - at one stage even tried hooking fans up to all unused fan connectors, after reading a thread on an Intel server forum, where someone got that error from wrongly connected fans

The 6 beeps indicate "Flash update has failed".

Is there a reference to that anywhere in SuperMicro documentation ?

There was no indication of failure during the update process, and this was one of many flash updates I've done

Maybe no indication because there's no error checking in the crappy batch file that SuperMicro supply to do the update

Perhaps you can try a BIOS Recovery as specified in Appendix C of the user manual.

I -have- tried that

Cannot get it to register my pressing Ctrl+Home, using a PS/2 keyboard

Speaking of Ctrl+Home - what a throwback to AMI BIOSes of 486 vintage, where processor speed was more leisurely - this is supposed to be a new UEFI BIOS

You'd expect jumpers on the motherboard for BIOS recovery, like Intel boards, for a product having pretensions as server grade

More suggestions would be appreciated

[ReverendJones]

Re: No love for SuperMicro C7Q67

The 6 beeps indicate "Flash update has failed" came from an AMI document on their Aptio bios which is used in this motherboard.
You haven't mentioned it, but I am sure you have tried removing the battery to reset the cmos.

This motherboard does have a jumper to enter recovery mode, but it seems they forgot to mention it in Appendix C with the recovery instructions. The jumper for recovery mode is JPME1. See page 2-30 in the user manual for description and location. It seems to be used for recovery of the Management Engine part of the bios. I don't know if that will be helpful or not.

[pfrcom]

Re: No love for SuperMicro C7Q67

You haven't mentioned it, but I am sure you have tried removing the battery to reset the cmos.

You're correct - one of the first things I tried

This motherboard does have a jumper to enter recovery mode, but it seems they forgot to mention it in Appendix C with the recovery instructions. The jumper for recovery mode is JPME1. See page 2-30 in the user manual for description and location. It seems to be used for recovery of the Management Engine part of the bios. I don't know if that will be helpful or not.

I have tried jumpering JPME1 which is supposed to "enable ME (Manufacture Mode) Recovery"

Didn't make any difference to the outcome, certainly didn't light up the USB key

With nothing left to lose, I also tried jumpering JCPUVRD_SMB which is next to the CATERR LED

It's mentioned in the manual as "PWM SMB programming header(for debugging only)" so jumpering may have been the wrong thing to do

At least no magic smoke came out - I recall one of the positions changing the pitch of the beeps

Thanks for your advice - you're a lot more helpful than "SuperMicro support" (an oxymoron if ever I heard one)

[RJARRRPCGP]

Re: No love for SuperMicro C7Q67

May be poorly seated DDR SDRAM modules.

Or the socket... (because it's LGA)

[pfrcom]

Re: No love for SuperMicro C7Q67

Now that it's getting warm in the Southern Hemisphere, I can play in the workshop without freezing

Inspired by
http://mondotech.blogspot.com.au/200...spi-flash.html
and
http://www.mylesgray.com/hardware/fi...n-motherboard/
I tried a reflash in situ

Without success - maybe would have worked had I known at first, what I subsequently learned

[pfrcom]

Re: No love for SuperMicro C7Q67

So I desoldered the BIOS chip - what a tiny little thing, beside a CR2032 battery for comparison

[pfrcom]

Re: No love for SuperMicro C7Q67

Then learnt the hard way how to reflash it with the latest Supermicro C7Q67 firmware image - which has changed, together with their reflash script, from the version I originally used

The Rube Goldberg setup used for reflashing, via the LPT port on another motherboard

[pfrcom]

Re: No love for SuperMicro C7Q67

The C7Q67 ready for replacement of its BIOS chip

[pfrcom]

Re: No love for SuperMicro C7Q67

Replaced

[pfrcom]

Re: No love for SuperMicro C7Q67

And all this effort rewarded

[pfrcom]

Re: No love for SuperMicro C7Q67

A pox on Supermicro and all their houses

My thanks to ReverendJones for setting me on the right track

[momaka]

Re: No love for SuperMicro C7Q67

Wow!
My hat off to you sir. That's a very good save right there .

[Topcat]

Re: No love for SuperMicro C7Q67

Nothing like saving a Supermicro!!

[TechGeek]

Re: No love for SuperMicro C7Q67

The title should be:

Fixing a beloved Supermicro(the hard way)

[Per Hansson]

Re: No love for SuperMicro C7Q67

I fixed an identical board here but afterwards noticed the MAC address for NIC1 was wrong.
Instead of something sensible it was 88:88:88:88:87:88

I found the following thread that described the use of Eeupdate which I've also attached to this post.
The MAC address was printed on a sticker on the board and it was no problem to update it.
There might be some more SMBIOS & DMI data etc still being wrong but at least the board seems to work fine like this with Server 2016

[Per Hansson]

Re: No love for SuperMicro C7Q67

The attached tool can fix the DMI data on the AMI BIOS for the Supermicro C7Q67
Usage in MS-DOS as with the tool in my previous post.
It has a built in help so it's easy to understand.

amidedos /SS 0123456789
amidedos /SV V1.01
amidedos /BS 0123456789
amidedos /BV V1.01

In the post I linked before I did dump my corrupted BIOS.
The data is stored in the BIOS under GUID: FD44820B-F1AB-41C0-AE4E-0C55556EB9BD
I could use AMI Aptio UEFI MMTool v5.0.0.7 to extract that module and confirm my serial number and board revision.
(Which is also printed on a sticker & the PCB respectively).
Of course I could also have replaced the module from my backup and flashed the BIOS.
But as recovery of soldered BIOS chips is not my favorite past-time I prefer a nice MS-DOS utility