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etherfish · 09-29-2008, 03:09 PM

I'm replying to myself, in essence, to reply to blue68f100's response to my post in the other thread:

>I do not know of any one that is not using the factory release BIOS. The
>hardware has a special chip that identifies it as Snap Hardware. the GOS checks
>for this. So your ROM is probably the problem. I do not know if your bios allow you
>to monitor the boot process with a null modem cable off com1 with a terminal. >This is how I check things out when I have a problem and can not access the gui.

In our 520, the onboard VGA does not have a port to attach a VGA cable so we moved a jumper to disable the onboard VGA card - a rage128 - and installed a regular PCI video card. With a usb keyboard, we were able to use the machine as a regular PC. This is how we watch the boot process, modified the BIOS settings. We also upgraded the RAM to 4 GB.

For what it's worth, we originally used an IDE CD-ROM connected to the motherboard's IDE header to install Solaris 11. After encountering problems with the HT1000 SATA controller, we PXE booted a debian install using the onboard NICs.

Has anyone else done anything like this?

To be frank, the hardware so far has done a fantastic job. We're currently using the onboard Ultra320 SCSI to run a set of 14 10K 73G drives in a Dell PowerVault 220S rack.

The curious part is that the Broadcom BIOS for running the HT1000 did not hang on the drives before we partitioned them. If it really is a BIOS bug, I'm surprised that SuperMicro hasn't released an update.

I suspect that GOS must be checking the DMI tables or similar. Unfortunately, I cannot check as I didn't consider the old bios image worth keeping around after I was happy the new BIOS worked well.

09-29-2008, 03:09 PM	#2
etherfish Cooling Neophyte Join Date: Sep 2008 Location: Norfolk, VA Posts: 5	Re: boot problem on snap 520 platform. I'm replying to myself, in essence, to reply to blue68f100's response to my post in the other thread: >I do not know of any one that is not using the factory release BIOS. The >hardware has a special chip that identifies it as Snap Hardware. the GOS checks >for this. So your ROM is probably the problem. I do not know if your bios allow you >to monitor the boot process with a null modem cable off com1 with a terminal. >This is how I check things out when I have a problem and can not access the gui. In our 520, the onboard VGA does not have a port to attach a VGA cable so we moved a jumper to disable the onboard VGA card - a rage128 - and installed a regular PCI video card. With a usb keyboard, we were able to use the machine as a regular PC. This is how we watch the boot process, modified the BIOS settings. We also upgraded the RAM to 4 GB. For what it's worth, we originally used an IDE CD-ROM connected to the motherboard's IDE header to install Solaris 11. After encountering problems with the HT1000 SATA controller, we PXE booted a debian install using the onboard NICs. Has anyone else done anything like this? To be frank, the hardware so far has done a fantastic job. We're currently using the onboard Ultra320 SCSI to run a set of 14 10K 73G drives in a Dell PowerVault 220S rack. The curious part is that the Broadcom BIOS for running the HT1000 did not hang on the drives before we partitioned them. If it really is a BIOS bug, I'm surprised that SuperMicro hasn't released an update. I suspect that GOS must be checking the DMI tables or similar. Unfortunately, I cannot check as I didn't consider the old bios image worth keeping around after I was happy the new BIOS worked well.