SOLVED Guide: Flashing Asrock E3C224D4I-14S to P16 LSI 2308

[jchan94]

Hi all,

Just wanted to post my findings on flashing the asrock E3C224D4I-14S to P16 drivers for the LSI SAS chip.

1. LSI SAS Chip not recognizing the SAS port drives
   1. The two LSI SAS Ports are actually the top TWO Ports when the RAM is at the bottom of the board. This is the one that is vertical, and one that is horizontal.

1. Hard drives not recognizing even though attached to the correct LSI SAS ports
   1. Go to the Bios and go to Storage Configuration. Then there will be a section with LSI Chip, and make sure to turn on the LSI boot-able and Smartdisk

1. Flashing LSI Chip to P16.
   1. Boot into the LSI Chip Config. Ctrl + C at boot
   2. Then in the configuration, go into the LSI Adapter
      1. Find the SAS Address: 500138XX:XXXXXXXX
      2. You only need the last 9 digits of the SAS address. I'd suggest just taking a picture of it just in case you don't write it down correctly. This is a critical step.
   3. Download the P16 file ->
      ftp://ftp.supermicro.com/driver/SAS/LSI/2308/Firmware/IT/Previous%20Releases/
   1. 1. Unzip the files. You only need the UEFI files.
      2. Put the contents into the root of a USB that is formatted to Fat32
   2. Boot into the Built in UEFI menu of the motherboard.
      1. Type Map to find the usb drive.
      2. mount the usb drive; mine was labeled fs0
         1. command is "mount fs0"
      3. Go into the USB.
         1. command is "fs0:"
      4. type "ls" to see the file names
      5. type "SMC2308T.NSH" which is a file that you put onto the usb. With this, you are executing it.
      6. Wait until it asks you for the SAS Address. Then input only the last 9 digits of it.
      7. Then you're pretty much done.

 

[joeschmuck]

Correct me if I'm wrong but I believe the latest version of FreeNAS uses the P20 drivers and was released a few days ago. Not sure if you will need to reflash to P20 since I don't use an LSI controller.

 

[jchan94]

Correct me if I'm wrong but I believe the latest version of FreeNAS uses the P20 drivers and was released a few days ago. Not sure if you will need to reflash to P20 since I don't use an LSI controller.

You are correct, and the same steps should be taken for the P20 drivers. I have decided to go with the P16 because I am running 9.3 instead of 9.3.1.

 

[joeschmuck]

That is fine, I would expect your procedure to work just as well using the P20 drivers. I just wanted to put that out there for the folks who may want to follow the steps and load P16 when they are using 9.3.1 and keep them from making a mistake.

 

[jchan94]

That is fine, I would expect your procedure to work just as well using the P20 drivers. I just wanted to put that out there for the folks who may want to follow the steps and load P16 when they are using 9.3.1 and keep them from making a mistake.

Yupp! Thanks :) I appreciate you seeing that little detail haha.

 

[Ericloewe]

The only difference is that P20 has a UEFI extension ROM, besides the traditional BIOS extension. This may complicate things, but the regular, "manual" process that's typical of LSI SAS controllers should always work.

 

[drapsag]

I try to upgrade the LSI to P20 on this board but without succes.
First thing to solve is booting in the EFI shell... which is needed for the new UEFI thingy :(

Has somebody succesfully upgrade this board to P20?

 

[Ericloewe]

I try to upgrade the LSI to P20 on this board but without succes.
First thing to solve is booting in the EFI shell... which is needed for the new UEFI thingy :(

Has somebody succesfully upgrade this board to P20?

Definitely.

If, for some mysterious reason, the board's BIOS does not include an EFI shell, you can just acquire the necessary executable (something.efi), place it in the root of a USB mass storage device and direct the BIOS to boot from said device.

 

[drapsag]

I followed this post with succes.

 

[maccaige]

Hi there, sorry to comment on such an old post but I've had no luck searching elsewhere, either on this forum or online. I have the same model Asrock board and am trying to find the SAS address. Using ctrl + c on boot as suggested does absolutely nothing for me (I've also tried ctrl +h and ctrl +l as i saw suggested elsewhere) and the system just continues either to the grub menu or to the BIOS depending on any other other options I've tried. I also cannot seem to find a sticker anywhere on the board that has the address as many other posts have suggested so any help would be greatly appreciated!

Edit: Sorry i found a way, not sure how to delete posts so just going to edit this