H200 flash

[melloa]

Got couple of H200 to flash and looking at the instructions it says to cover pins B5 and B6 on H310 if your computer won't boot.

As mine are H200, should I cover those pins if my computer won't boot? I will flashing on another computer, not the FreeNAS box, so won't cut them (I don't like to use electrical tape, they can cause future problems with re-seating the card and tearing the tape a little bit, causing the contact to close), after flash is finished and they are tested on the FreeNAS box, but wanted to be sure that's applicable for H200.

Thanks!

 

[Spearfoot]

Got couple of H200 to flash and looking at the instructions it says to cover pins B5 and B6 on H310 if your computer won't boot.

As mine are H200, should I cover those pins if my computer won't boot? I will flashing on another computer, not the FreeNAS box, so won't cut them (I don't like to use electrical tape, they can cause future problems with re-seating the card and tearing the tape a little bit, causing the contact to close), after flash is finished and they are tested on the FreeNAS box, but wanted to be sure that's applicable for H200.

Thanks!

My understanding, perhaps mistaken, is that this only applies to the H310, not the H200. In any case, I've never had problems booting any of my systems with the H200 installed.

Perhaps @Mirfster, who knows quite a bit about the Dell HBAs, will stop by and give us a definitive answer.

 

[melloa]

My understanding, perhaps mistaken, is that this only applies to the H310, not the H200. In any case, I've never had problems booting any of my systems with the H200 installed.

Perhaps @Mirfster, who knows quite a bit about the Dell HBAs, will stop by and give us a definitive answer.

Thanks. In case of doubt I'll test without and cover if won't boot. I don't believe would hurt anything.

 

[melloa]

Finally got the time to play with it.

Using a Dell2950 without the Dell SAS, with the H200 plugged to one of the back slots.

The 2950 and another PC booted fine without covering p5 and p6, so assume that's only for H310.

One thing though. Followed the steps from https://techmattr.wordpress.com/201...-flashing-to-it-mode-dell-perc-h200-and-h310/ and either I've missed something or it's missing steps.

1st it clear the e2prom with megarec - with that the card can be flashed with another fw no problem.
After that reloads the firmware with 6GBPSAS.fw and 2118it.bin, and rewrites the sas address. So far so good.
Problem is that after each step requiring reboot, I've noticed that the card sas appear, like was disabled. Not talking about the setup utility assessed by crtl-c, but not even display the sas info ... manufacture, model, etc.

So unless I've missed any steps I don't know if that works. Below what I saw:

H200 DOS:
sas2flsh.exe -c 0 -list Write down SAS address.
megarec.exe -writesbr 0 sbrempty.bin If this fails move on to next step.
megarec.exe -cleanflash 0 Reboot.
sas2flsh.exe -o -f 6GBPSAS.fw Reboot.
---
sas2flsh.exe -o -f 2118it.bin
or sas2flsh.exe -o -f 2118p7.bin, reboot, then s2fp19.exe -o -f 2118it.bin
---
s2fp19.exe -o -sasadd 500xxxxxxxxxxxxx

So ... worked around by loading an old p17 bin and rom, and upgrading to p20. Still need to continue playing as the card is now detected, but no drives are shown.

Any ideas what I've done wrong?

 

[melloa]

Drives detected -> bad cable. Now will continue with my reverse engineering combining both methods, to get to a working product, tomorrow. So any ideas would be appreciated.

 

[Spearfoot]

Finally got the time to play with it.

Using a Dell2950 without the Dell SAS, with the H200 plugged to one of the back slots.

The 2950 and another PC booted fine without covering p5 and p6, so assume that's only for H310.

One thing though. Followed the steps from https://techmattr.wordpress.com/201...-flashing-to-it-mode-dell-perc-h200-and-h310/ and either I've missed something or it's missing steps.

1st it clear the e2prom with megarec - with that the card can be flashed with another fw no problem.
After that reloads the firmware with 6GBPSAS.fw and 2118it.bin, and rewrites the sas address. So far so good.
Problem is that after each step requiring reboot, I've noticed that the card sas appear, like was disabled. Not talking about the setup utility assessed by crtl-c, but not even display the sas info ... manufacture, model, etc.

So unless I've missed any steps I don't know if that works. Below what I saw:

H200 DOS:
sas2flsh.exe -c 0 -list Write down SAS address.
megarec.exe -writesbr 0 sbrempty.bin If this fails move on to next step.
megarec.exe -cleanflash 0 Reboot.
sas2flsh.exe -o -f 6GBPSAS.fw Reboot.
---
sas2flsh.exe -o -f 2118it.bin
or sas2flsh.exe -o -f 2118p7.bin, reboot, then s2fp19.exe -o -f 2118it.bin
---
s2fp19.exe -o -sasadd 500xxxxxxxxxxxxx

So ... worked around by loading an old p17 bin and rom, and upgrading to p20. Still need to continue playing as the card is now detected, but no drives are shown.

Any ideas what I've done wrong?

@melloa, flashing the H200 is more complicated than working with an LSI or IBM 2008-based card. I'm working from my laptop at my daughter's home, so I don't have access to all of my goodies, or I'd shoot you a copy of the needed tools... but if you search @Mirfster 's posts you may find what you need, as I used the filesets he posted here on the forum (which, sadly, I haven't been able to find using search).

If you have a 'vintage' H200 with an old version of the IR firmware, then it's a 3-step process to crossflash the card to the latest-n-greatest P20/P21 IT-mode firmware:

1> Flash from IR mode to older IT mode (6GBPSAS?) firmware using the older Dell tools.
2> Flash from the older IT mode to an intermediate version of the LSI IT firmware, in the process answering 'Yes' when the flash software asks if you want to change the manufacturer code from Dell to LSI.
3> Flash from the intermediate IT version to the latest (P21) version.

At least, this is what I did on the 4 Dell H200's I own. You end up with a card that identifies itself as a 9211, and works great with FreeNAS.

 

[skyline65]

I had problems with that guide with my H310.... if I remember it wouldn’t work with the newer "sas2flsh.exe" and older firmware. But as Im at work I don’t have access to my USB drive with the files.

I did a search and found this...

"A lot of people use P7 in their guides but P7 sas2flsh can only downgrade/crossflash certain revisions of the Dell cards. P5 will crossflash anything you tell it to."

 

[Spearfoot]

I had problems with that guide with my H310.... if I remember it wouldn’t work with the newer "sas2flsh.exe" and older firmware. But as Im at work I don’t have access to my USB drive with the files.

I did a search and found this...

"A lot of people use P7 in their guides but P7 sas2flsh can only downgrade/crossflash certain revisions of the Dell cards. P5 will crossflash anything you tell it to."

Yes, this seems to be the crux of the matter; you have to use specific versions of the firmware and/or flashing executable to change the manufacturer ID on the HBA and thus allow it to be flashed w/ later versions of the LSI firmware. Or so I understand it...

 

[melloa]

@melloa, flashing the H200 is more complicated than working with an LSI or IBM 2008-based card. I'm working from my laptop at my daughter's home, so I don't have access to all of my goodies, or I'd shoot you a copy of the needed tools... but if you search @Mirfster 's posts you may find what you need, as I used the filesets he posted here on the forum (which, sadly, I haven't been able to find using search).

If you have a 'vintage' H200 with an old version of the IR firmware, then it's a 3-step process to crossflash the card to the latest-n-greatest P20/P21 IT-mode firmware:

1> Flash from IR mode to older IT mode (6GBPSAS?) firmware using the older Dell tools.
2> Flash from the older IT mode to an intermediate version of the LSI IT firmware, in the process answering 'Yes' when the flash software asks if you want to change the manufacturer code from Dell to LSI.
3> Flash from the intermediate IT version to the latest (P21) version.

At least, this is what I did on the 4 Dell H200's I own. You end up with a card that identifies itself as a 9211, and works great with FreeNAS.

Again,

Appreciate you trying to help.

I did manage getting one H200 working on IT mode yesterday and am working on a second to better capture the steps and have a spare.

That guide is missing something. I don't have too much experience with flashing cards as that's something I haven't done in 20+ years, since the Novell time.

The thing about that flashing steps I saw is that after you erase everything with megarec the firmware and bios are gone. If you follow all steps, you won't get any errors but you won't see the card when booting. Not sure if the bios is not re-uploaded to the card or what. I know to save space some won't load the configuration utility, but I want to see and have all, so I can plug a monitor and see what's going on.

I'll continue researching and, for sure, looking for @Mirfster posts.

Again thanks for your help!

 

[skyline65]

If I remember I used the P5 sasflash and everything worked fine after that.

"6GBPSAS.FW and LSI P07 need to be flashed with the LSI P05 sas2flash.efi because later versions will simply refuse when they encounter a NVDATA mismatch. Once that’s done, you can use the latest (P20 at the moment) sas2flash.efi to flash your final firmware version. This also has the advantage that you don’t get these “Adapter Reset Failed” warnings."

http://blog.michael.kuron-germany.d...dell-perc-h200-to-lsi-9211-8i/comment-page-1/

with links at the bottom for the utilities

 

[melloa]

Thanks to all that helped me on this journey. I'd quote Jean-Luc here, but is not that hard after you understand the limitations and tricks.

Below steps and a link with all files I've used to flash both of my controllers (three times to be sure it works). As everything I do is not the best way (I'm sure) and worked on my controllers, so use it at your own risk ;)

View attachment upload_2016-11-11_15-27-59.png

View attachment upload_2016-11-11_15-29-49.png

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0B6clHa5IX562ZnVQTzRnS2ZBZ2M?usp=sharing


Flash Dell H200 to IT mode

Used an old computer without UEFI. In my case a Dell 2950 using FreeDOS created with rufus. You can download it from: https://rufus.akeo.ie/

** Make sure the card you are flashing is the only one installed on your motherboard **

1 - Use rufus to create a bootable USB stick
2 - Download the zip file DellH200, unzip, and copy to the USB stick from above link
3 - Make sure you remove all SAS controllers from the server and only have the one been flashed installed
4 - Make a note of the card SAS address. Will look like: 590b11c0:22475a00
4.1 - If your card doesn't have a lable with it, do the steps below:

cd /dellh200/dell
sas2flsh -c 0 -list

5 - Blank the card
cd /dellh200/SAS2008
megarec -writesbr 0 sbrempty.bin
megarec -cleanflash 0

Reboot

6 - Flash the Dell firmware first before upgrading to the LSI firmware.

cd /lsi/dell
sas2flsh -o -f H200A.fw -b mptsas2.rom

7 - Program the SAS address for the adapter.

sas2flsh -o -sasadd <the address you wrote down on step 4, no dashes)

Reboot

8 - Flash the LSI firmware

(*) Note: For this to work you must use the sas2flsh.exe from the Dell folder. To make it easy, I've copied it as sas2flde.exe and copied to the p20 directory, so commands below will be using that version.

cd /dellh200/P20
sas2flde -o -f 2118IT.bin -b mptsas2.rom

Reboot

Ready for testing.

 

[sp00n]

Hi melloa, I just requested access to the files you shared.
I have some problems. I cant see any disk under my controller. I have gen8 microserver and SAS-SAS cable from controller to Microserver backplane. It is confirmed to work as my drives are detected while cable is connected to B120i HP on-board controller.
I do not see my card in the BIOS - its says "Slot 1 - unknown device - IRQ11" - guess it is because i did not flash this "-b mptsas2.rom"
Under ESXi i see the card as LSI HBA 6Gbps... is my flashing bad ?

 

[melloa]

Last time I've tried to use those on vSphere 6.5 it didn't work for me. Either my MoBo didn't have VT-d or the card wasn't compatible. As I really didn't have (and still don't) any interest in virtualizing my NAS, I didn't research any further.
The card work on my ASRock box (two of them) with a 10x4TiB pool on FreeNAS 9.x (I think I've using since 9,3).
Access was granted, but Im sorry I can't help with your specific problem