I don't remember exactly but that sounds about right, I didn't bother asking since, y'know, covid, and it seemed like you werent as active on the forums schooling people so I figured you didn't have much time.
I replaced them with a 9305, and they helped me learn how not to ebay, but I was curious if they weren't working because I'm dumb, or because they are genuine fakes.
So anyways I owe ya some commentary. And here it is. I also remember my problem now. I don't have any true 9240-8i's laying around for a direct comparison, but, looking at this more closely, I think we can make some reasonable conclusions.
The pictures are not great, but they don't need to be, IMO. I felt it sufficient to demonstrate... your two cards (farther back) vs a gen-u-ine IBM ServeRAID M1015 / LSI 9220-8i, and a similarly genuine LSI 9211-8i.
The first issue is the PCB material. It's lighter green and duller. The two SFF-8087 jacks, while they are labeled "Amphenol", the printing on them seems like it's a little different than the legit ones I looked at. But more importantly, the jacks themselves look cheap. They do not have the long exposed pins of the legit boards. Your boards are also not labeled "LSI", which seems really strange for a retail RAID card offering. The power inductors on the board (the silver or black parts labeled 6R8) look cheap on your board. And the silk screening, it just doesn't look ... sharp. Look at the LSI cards and the precise hi-def lettering.
And the brackets. While superficially similar, including the stamped printing on the tab, several minor things. The LSI bracket is stamped "6Gbps SAS" with their little logo thingy, found all over their gear of that era. The other one, the finish isn't as shiny. This actually stood out to me when I went into the bin of LSI brackets. The hole placement of the presumed knockoff isn't as precise, and the holes are just a bit smaller. Airflow matters in servers. But this would not convince me all by itself, it's just circumstantially suspicious.
Stickers feel a bit off. No KCC compliance sticker. The SN: sticker barcode is "short" (not full height). It has "MR SAS 9240-8i" when most of the products of the time were labeled "SAS9240-8i". The SAS address on LSI cards is typically tan.
I suppose it's possible that they're legit cards, but in my experience, when all the little stuff doesn't add up, something's wrong.
I have on my Shelf of Shame a nice Intel PRO/1000 MT "DAUL" (sic) card of similar quality. You pick these things up and even if you deal with them on a semi-regular basis, there's nothing horribly alarming about them. The Dell PERC H200 and H310 look a lot more "fake" to me than these 9240's.
I have to see if I can do something a little more with this, but, I wanted to make sure I at least got around to it.
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