Asrock E3C224D4M-16RE & onboard LSI 3008

[MrJosh86]

Hi all,

I have just found one of these at a good price:

https://www.asrockrack.com/general/productdetail.asp?Model=E3C224D4M-16RE#Specifications

Its a slightly older board with some great features, namely the LSI card and the ability to add a 10GBe mezzanine card. I've been testing it out over the last few days but am having a real hard time flashing it into IT mode, starting to wonder if its even possible.
The guides i have looked up have all referenced either a supermicro board with the same onboard adapter, or PCIe cards using the same LSI chip. They all reference shorting a jumper on the board (TP12) that this ASRock board doesnt appear to have on it.

I have flashed PCIe cards before but never an onboard one. Sas2Flash (and Sas3Flash) are unable to see the LSI card currently, i am getting an error saying "no LSI adapters found".

Anyone have any experience with this board? or ones like it?

 

[sretalla]

As I understand it, those onboard version of LSI cards don't play like a PCIe one.

In my experience, you just ignore it and use a proper one you bought.

 

[MrJosh86]

Damn, that's the answer I was hoping not to see.

I know there are some supermicro boards that have on board SAS controllers on them that some people have managed to flash, but i guess my asrock board is destined to end up on ebay.

I already have 32GB of DDR3 ECC ram, a Xeon 1270 v3 and 10 drives ready for a new/old build. Any suggestions of boards to look out for?

 

[droeders]

I'm certainly no expert, and have no experience with this particular board, but I'll weigh-in anyway.

The onboard controller appears to be a LSI-3008, which certainly should be flashable to IT mode. I have to disagree with @sretalla with "don't play like a PCIe one". This controller is a PCIe device, and should show up as such using 'pciconf' under FreeBSD/FreeNAS. I've flashed on-board SAS controllers with x8/x9 SM motherboards (older SAS chipsets) and it was no different than add-in cards.

While I don't have any experience with the LSI-3008, I do think you need to use sas3flash (as you said you've tried) and not sas2flash since it's a SAS3 part. I also see mention of jumpering in some of the guides, but didn't find anything promising in the ASRock manual for this board.

Does the SAS BIOS show up when the motherboard boots?

Does the card show up in FreeBSD using 'pciconf'? I've seen cases where these can be disabled in the BIOS, so maybe another thing to look for.

Did you try using the EFI and non-EFI versions of sas3flash?

 

[MrJosh86]

The 3008 does show up when the board boots, and i can get into the management of it by pressing ctrl+c, i can see that what firmware its running within that.
To be honest I've already initiated the RMA process for it, and i'm looking to get it posted back to the supplier tomorrow. I've spent the best part of a week trying to get it to recognise the 3008 in multiple versions of sas2+3flash and megarec without any progress at all.

To top it off i've tested 5 different RAM kits in it, and the only one i can get the board to boot on is two 1GB dimms (that i honestly didnt think worked any more given how badly they've been mistreated over the years). In all my time building PC's i've never known a board to be so picky over RAM. Two of these kits are on the QVL too - This is the reason i'm giving for returning it.

So i'm now looking for a board that'll take my 1270 v3 (c224/c226) and accept one of the 32GB of (the now many) ECC memory kits i have. Ideally something with the ability for 2 PCIe HBA's and space for a 10GBe card. Recommendations?

 

[sretalla]

This controller is a PCIe device, and should show up as such using 'pciconf' under FreeBSD/FreeNAS. I've flashed on-board SAS controllers with x8/x9 SM motherboards (older SAS chipsets) and it was no different than add-in cards.

I can agree that the experience with SM boards may well be different, but my experience with Asrock and ASUS boards, seems to differ... I'm not entirely sure how or why, but the on-board version seems not to behave like a real card, despite being clearly visible in the BIOS screens sequence as such.

I think perhaps that the way the chip is installed, the memory/EPROM is somehow shared/owned by the motherboard and can't be addressed using the standard LSI tools.

Anyway, happy to be proven wrong if somebody knows better.

 

[droeders]

I can agree that the experience with SM boards may well be different, but my experience with Asrock and ASUS boards, seems to differ... I'm not entirely sure how or why, but the on-board version seems not to behave like a real card, despite being clearly visible in the BIOS screens sequence as such.

I think perhaps that the way the chip is installed, the memory/EPROM is somehow shared/owned by the motherboard and can't be addressed using the standard LSI tools.

Anyway, happy to be proven wrong if somebody knows better.

@sretalla : Thanks for clarifying. I can't dispute this, as I don't have any experience with these boards. I would be surprised by this, but not shocked.

@MrJosh86 : I think you could use your CPU and RAM in the Supermicro X10 series of boards. Looks like the hardware recommendation guide suggests a few of them like the X10SLL-F:

https://www.ixsystems.com/community/resources/hardware-recommendations-guide.12/

You should double-check for yourself before purchasing, but it looks like they are a match to me.

 

[Ericloewe]

In any case, don't bother with sas2flash, since it has zero chance of working with an SAS3 controller.