X11SSM-F New BIOS Posted

[B166ER]

For others struggling: I had to load the optimized defaults or else it wouldn't boot FreeDOS. Bios update worked as it seems, the ACPI Error is gone.

 

[Ericloewe]

That's nothing. My ASRock X99 WS doesn't boot with any BIOS version newer than 1.x. At all. Now that is mighty irritating.

 

[B166ER]

That's nothing. My ASRock X99 WS doesn't boot with any BIOS version newer than 1.x. At all. Now that is mighty irritating.

Wow, i just looked at the bios version history of that particular board of yours. Is the bios soldered or can you replace it?

 

[Ericloewe]

Wow, i just looked at the bios version history of that particular board of yours. Is the bios soldered or can you replace it?

It has two EEPROM devices, both socketed. Never needed to touch them, though, the UEFI flasher works fine.

But I would like to get some fixes for a number of BIOS bugs...

 

[tedthom]

Just FYI, it looks like v2.1 got removed from the "Update your Bios" page. Instead v2.0c is back there.

 

[Ericloewe]

Probably because Intel pulled the microcode update. Then reissued it. Then pulled it again. I think that's the current status...

 

[joeschmuck]

Nothing like posting a BIOS change and pulling it back after I'm sure quite a few people have applied it. I'm now curious if the BIOS update has some flaw in it that could cause harm. Well it's been running for a while now so I'll just wait to see what shakes from the trees.

 

[Ericloewe]

I'm now qurious if the BIOS update has some flaw in it that could cause harm.

Well, the Intel microcode seems to cause random reboots, possibly only if the new instructions are used.

 

[joeschmuck]

Well, the Intel microcode seems to cause random reboots, possibly only if the new instructions are used.

I have not had any random reboots to date so maybe I'll be lucky and nothing bad will happen before the next BIOS update occurs. The one thing I dislike about Supermicro is they want $$$$ to allow you to flash your BIOS via IPMI. I just returned the computer to the basement and it would actually be easier to just drag a monitor and keyboard down to the machine to reflash the BIOS.

 

[droeders]

I have not had any random reboots to date so maybe I'll be lucky and nothing bad will happen before the next BIOS update occurs. The one thing I dislike about Supermicro is they want $$$$ to allow you to flash your BIOS via IPMI. I just returned the computer to the basement and it would actually be easier to just drag a monitor and keyboard down to the machine to reflash the BIOS.

I have 2 of these MBs and unfortunately updated both to 2.1.

That said, I haven't had any mysterious issues and plan to keep them on this BIOS until a new version is released (or I run into problems).

 

[B166ER]

I don't really get this. I thought there is no cpu microcode update against Meltdown/Spectre and afaik in the bios version history of R2.1, i didn't see anything listed that would substantiate that fact that they've added something like this. So why did they pull R2.1? Besides that, i haven't experienced any instabilities yet with R2.1. But my system is not under full load at the moment....

 

[Nick2253]

No microcode patch against Meltdown, but there are some Spectre bugs that can be patched in microcode.

 

[B166ER]

But they are definitely not in the R2.1 release. They released this version way too early for those patches to be in there. Hell, there isn't even a properly coded spectre patch yet afaik...

 

[droeders]

Version 2.1a is out now. Some interesting bits in the changelog:

https://www.supermicro.com/support/resources/getfile.php?SoftwareItemID=4896&&type=releasenote

 

[Grinchy]

There's a new IPMI Version R1.41.

Someone knows wether the settings will be reseted after updating the IPMI?

 

[joeschmuck]

Will my BIOS is still the old recalled version, never had an issue with it. I may upgrade the BIOS and IPMI this weekend, depends on if I have a few hours to sit around and troubleshoot if things go wrong.

 

[DrKK]

Just did mine this morning. Uneventful. Works.

While I was at it, wdidle'd some drives too.

 

[joeschmuck]

Still haven't done mine, had too much fun on Saturday and stayed up way too late, or is that early. Sunday I was too beat and I never update my computers when I'm seeing double or tripple. I tend to do stupid things.

Just did mine this morning. Uneventful. Works.

While I was at it, wdidle'd some drives too.

Glad it was uneventful. Does that include the IPMI update as well?

 

[DrKK]

Does that include the IPMI update as well?

Didn't even realize there was an IPMI update. I just did it, with no apparent ill effect.

 

[joeschmuck]

I've updated both the BIOS and IPMI firmware. The only notes I have is when I installed the BIOS update, the system rebooted 3 or 4 times, each time getting closer to actually trying to bootstrap, and once I got to that point I got the message that this is not a boot drive but rather a FreeNAS data drive. So a quick BIOS adjustment to point to my SSD and that solved that problem.

The IPMI update went smoother and totally seamless.

Lastly I went ahead and updated my VMWare ESXi 6.5 to the current version, I was only a few weeks behind. My FreeNAS VM booted up just fine, and I should be all good for a while now.