LSI 9240 to 9211 crossflash problems

[autotalon]

Hello, I waited to ask anyone until I had tried any/everything I could think of, and I cant get this IT mode firmware to work. I have a lot of LSI branded 9240-8i cards from Lenovo servers that we never use, and I have yet to successfully flash the firmware. I did wipe one, but have not got the actual flash to work. Things i've tried:
-Freedos boot (gets "Failed to initialize PAL" error). Tried this on three different motherboards, I had to leave the CSM enabled to get it to boot at all, if I turned it off it wouldnt recognize the drive
-UEFI shell . The only one I've got to work is Refind, if I try to initialize a FAT32 GPT drive myself and put the shell in EFI/boot, boot/EFI, or the root it has not worked. I also tried swapping the EFI file out after I write the Refind image, and it just makes it fail to boot. Tried it with theirs and LSI's shell.

-Tried LSI USB tool. Made it, got it to boot, gives same "Failed to initialize PAL" error when i get there.

The only conclusion I can come to is that I probably should be able to get sas2flash.efi to boot directly, but I cant seem to figure out how. The closest I feel I got was booting from Refind and trying to run sas2flash, at which point I got an error that indicated that the shell didnt support the command.

Any suggestions welcome. If anyone can just make a DD image of one they know works, that'd probably be helpful.

 

[Ericloewe]

What motherboard are you trying this on?

 

[autotalon]

What motherboard are you trying this on?

I have tried three so far, an Asus Intel 1155 board (cant remember model off the top of my head), Asus Crosshair V Formula Z AM3 board, and a Lenovo TS140 server. Also tried my NAS, Intel Atom D525MW (not sure if that one supports real EFI, FreeNAS wont even boot from EFI on it)

 

[Ericloewe]

Neither of the Asus boards has an EFI shell included in ROM? I'm used to seeing Asus boards include it.

 

[autotalon]

Neither of the Asus boards has an EFI shell included in ROM? I'm used to seeing Asus boards include it.

Nope, even in EFI mode with CSM disabled, no shell. I tried clearing the keys and making sure secure boot was disabled as well, no change. I remember some of my other boards having it; if my main rig wasnt so hard to use for something like this i'd try it as it's significantly newer.

 

[JnB]

Hi, Did you have any luck on this ?

I'm having a Lenovo 530-8i available (9440-8i) and since I'm new on the crossflashing thing was hoping to get some advice

 

[Ericloewe]

If you don't have a UEFI shell built in, you can just provide one on a FAT32 disk and boot to it.

 

[autotalon]

Hi, Did you have any luck on this ?

I'm having a Lenovo 530-8i available (9440-8i) and since I'm new on the crossflashing thing was hoping to get some advice

Not yet, still having problems getting a shell to boot that supports the necessary commands. I got a standard shell to boot once, but it gave an error that seemed to indicate that the shell wasnt the right version for the firmware flash. I'm surprised there isnt a prebuilt image for this that's easy to use. LSI has one, but I couldnt get it to work properly.