Unable to boot up with second raid card

[Nnyan]

Hello everyone, I am having an issue trying to get my new box built. I'm using an older X8DT6-F-ISO18 motherboard with a pair of L5640 cpu's (bundle was free). The motherboard boots up fine with the first 8 drives attached (to the onboard LSI 2008). And I can attach up to 6 more drives on the SATA ports. My problem starts when I add my Intel RS2WC080 card (also LSI 2008 based I believe), that's when I don't see the setup screen for either card and anything attached to the Intel is not detected anywhere. I've tried each of the 5 PCI-e slots and I get the same. I tried the card on a different motherboard (that has no built in SAS) and the Intel card worked fine (with the drives). All my typical troubleshooting has failed (all the components work fine outside of this build). At this point i'm glad I only got one of the Intel cards instead of two!

If anyone has any ideas it will be greatly appreciated! I would really love to get over this hump and get all 24 drives up and running.

Thank you!

 

[survive]

Hi Nnyan,

My first guess is that you are running out of "option ROM" space when you try to load both LSI BIOS.

Might be worth checking Google to confirm how to get back into the BIOS then try disabling the BIOS on one or both of the cards. You don't need the HBA BIOS to if you aren't booting from the card.

-Will

 

[Nnyan]

Big DUH. Didn't even think of that. Will try it next.

 

[Mirfster]

Intel RS2WC080

Is this card capable of IT/JBOD mode? Has it been flashed to the proper IT or Firmware version? /Sorry, but not too familiar with this particular Make/Model...

 

[Ericloewe]

Mixing different versions of LSI SAS2 BIOS extension ROMs has caused weird issues before. Make sure both cards are flashed to the same firmware version. As for the boot ROM, I recommend installing it on only one card (it'll be able to deal with all the LSI SAS2 cards in your system).

Of course, both cards must be in IT mode to work properly with FreeNAS.

 

[Nnyan]

Ok to be honest I got the motherboard and it was supposed to have the card already flashed to IT mode, so I have no idea versions it was flashed to. I flashed the Intel card to IT mode but I did this a while back so I can't remember. Is there an easy way to figure out what versions I'm running?

 

[Mirfster]

Command: sas2flash -listall