SOLVED MSI C236M & 9207-8i not working

[aussiejuggalo]

Swapped out my board to the MSI C236M Workstation board after my Supermicro MBD-A1SRi-2758F-O board crapped it's self after 5 years but I now have a problem.

The MSI board isn't working with the 9270-8i 9207-8i card, the card shows up as "unknown manufacturer" or something in the BIOS board explorer, the card boots (although it takes 2 minutes to do so) and I can get into the cards configuration utility (picture below), but it doesn't detect any drives, the 846 backplane has no lights going at all and obviously FreeNAS see nothing.



I have got some stuff disabled in the MSI BIOS like the high precision event timers all the serial stuff but I didn't think any of that would effect the PCI-e cards.

Anyone have any ideas why its being stupid?

Thanks.

Edit, mistyped the HBA card number, it's 9207-8i not 9270-8i.

 

[jgreco]

A 9270-8i is a RAID card and isn't expected to work well with FreeNAS. If it was working, though, carefully try disconnecting the SAS cables and carefully(!!!!!!) reinsert them and make sure they are fully and correctly seated.

 

[aussiejuggalo]

My mistake it's a 9207-8i card.

I did unplug and plug everything in a few times, took the card out as well and checked it. I did notice it's running firmware and BIOS from 2012, should I bother updating it and see if that fixes anything?

 

[Elliot Dierksen]

I did notice it's running firmware and BIOS from 2012, should I bother updating it and see if that fixes anything?

It sounds like the issue is with the motherboard. I personally wouldn't upgrade the card firmware while it isn't playing nice with the MB. You could end up bricking the card. How did the old system fail? If it was power related, it is possible the HBA was damaged as well. My first thought would be to move the HBA to a different system and see if it plays nice there. If it does, then I would look at BIOS upgrades for the problematic motherboard and resetting the motherboard BIOS options to default.

 

[aussiejuggalo]

It sounds like the issue is with the motherboard. I personally wouldn't upgrade the card firmware while it isn't playing nice with the MB. You could end up bricking the card. How did the old system fail? If it was power related, it is possible the HBA was damaged as well. My first thought would be to move the HBA to a different system and see if it plays nice there. If it does, then I would look at BIOS upgrades for the problematic motherboard and resetting the motherboard BIOS options to default.

The old one failed from the C2000 clock issue, I never bothered to get the board replaced just used it till it died. The card should be fine but I could test it on another system I just didn't really want to because it's a bit of a hassle.

I'll try updating the boards BIOS, I've just been hesitant because MSI isn't known for great BIOS's. Might even replace the CMOS battery if I've got a spare and see if that's causing an issue.

Edit, Ok so messed around with it for a couple of hours, updated the boards BIOS, changed the CMOS battery & updated the cards firmware, tried to do the BIOS but it didn't seem to work but said it did? I dunno.

After a lot of messing around I finally got it working, not sure what it was, I swapped PCI slots, dusted them out etc but it seems to be working now. This boards a bit weird though because it wants to boot from a NAS drive with no way of selecting an SSD without going into the boot options and manually selecting it every restart... annoying. It also doesn't want to PWM control my 120mm fan wall which is extremely annoying but I'll live, at least it's actually working now.