Supermicro SASLP MV8 not booting

Hi all,

Just purchased a Supermicro SASLP MV8 and installed on my motherboard but this is what I get:

It loads, detects all the mobo hdd and the supermicro loads, detects all the hdds and then goes to a blank screen and freezes.

I've disabled the int 13h on the the supermicro and tried different PCIe x16 and x4 slots and disabled everything on the mobo bios one at a time and no avail until I disabled the SATA controller.

I have a ASUS M4A89GTD PRO USB3 motherboard running the below storage specs:

* SB850 Chipset

6 xSATA 6.0 Gb/s supports RAID 0,1,5,10

* JMicron® JMB361 PATA and SATA controller

1x Ultra DMA 133/100 for up to 2 PATA devices

I'm assuming that is where the clash is, the JMB361?

Is anyone else aware of this issue?

What would be my steps from here as losing the 6 onboard SATA ports would be a bit of a PITA although I can add 3 SASLP cards to this board.

I'll check out the bios of the mobo and the firmware of the SASLP but any other sugesstions?

Thanks Josh

I just had a similar issue, and it turned out to be a bad PCI-E slot on my motherboard. Have you tried it with a video card?

No unfortunately I don't have any other PCIe cards, Most of muy stuff is old.

The card did work in the other PCIe x16 and the PCIe x4 slots.

It also boots and starts loading unRAD (didn't go all the way as the other drives were disabled) when I disable the onboard SATA controller so I suspect it all works.

Thanks Josh

OK update,

I've updated the BIOS on the mother board and still not working.

The Bios for the SASLP loads up and I can change settings there, the mobo and the SASLP both find the hdds, it just freezes after that.

The only time it gets through that is if either the SASLP is unplugged or if the SATA controller is disabled.

Thanks Josh

It loads, detects all the mobo hdd and the supermicro loads, detects all the hdds and then goes to a blank screen and freezes.

I think your description is little bit too vague. because what you describe are information you can find from BIOS in MB and Supermicro during POST.

Exactly what do you meant by "blank screen".

(a) Do you see limetech boot up menu?

(b) If you do see limetech boot up menu and choose to boot unRAID what is the last messages you can see from console during OS booting up?

I'll check out the bios of the mobo and the firmware of the SASLP but any other sugesstions?

You can

(a) Unplug all disks, if system can boot then at least you know there is no conflict between MB and add-on card.

(b) put disks back one group at a time, for example put disks connected to SATA at MB first, if everything is good then disks connected to supermicro add-on cards...etc, through this process you can minimize the possibility

Thanks GK20,

I'll try and expalin an bit clearer:

on boot up goes through the mobo POST/hdd check and finds them, goes through the SASLP group spin up, comes up [ok], finds the hdd then the next screen is blank. No unraid/memtest screen. Usually freezes there, sometimes reboots.

With the mobo SATA controller enabled, I can't get to the mobo bios but I can get to the SASLP bios. I press delete to enter BIOS but it freezes after the supermicro card POST.

With the SASLP card out boots normally and mobo Bios is accessable.

With the mobo SATA controller disabled and SASLP bios is acessable and boots fine too.

I have tried with all the drives out, still the same issue.

Does that make sense?

Thanks Josh

on boot up goes through the mobo POST/hdd check and finds them, goes through the SASLP group spin up, comes up [ok], finds the hdd then the next screen is blank. No unraid/memtest screen. Usually freezes there, sometimes reboots.

Now we can leave unRAID alone because you are not even in this stage yet.

With the mobo SATA controller enabled, I can't get to the mobo bios but I can get to the SASLP bios. I press delete to enter BIOS but it freezes after the supermicro card POST.

With the SASLP card out boots normally and mobo Bios is accessable.

With the mobo SATA controller disabled and SASLP bios is acessable and boots fine too.

I have tried with all the drives out, still the same issue.

Does that make sense?

To some extent, it does. The way PC perform POST (Power On Self Test) is BIOS on MB will

(a) Test CPU

(b) Test memory

© Test on board chipset and do initialization (including probing those disks connected to on board SATA)

(d) Scan I/O address space for any add-on card and if add-on card has on-board BIOS give control to this BIOS for initialization (this is when Supermicro card does its own initialization and disk probing in order to come up resource list)

(e) Once add-on card finish its initialization give control back to processor then processor try next add-on if any until there is no more add-on card need to be initialized.

(f) Consolidate resource usages and sort out any resource conflict.

(g) Boot from devices in boot device list.

All those symptoms you described looks to me once Supermicro finished its initialization it mess up system configuration, I am not saying it is Supermicro's fault, but rather this card and this MB just can not work together.

Meanwhile, by searching forum, looks like there were some IRQ conflict issue on this MB.

http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=7768.0

you might want to ask someone,maybe local store, has POST diagnostic card to do some test for you.

http://www.ehow.com/how_4737558_use-post-diagnostics-card.html

I had problems with this card displaying similar  symptoms to you. I reset BIOS to default and the server booted up fine. have you tried the mobo bios default settings?

hi Userpaul,

yeah I read your post on that and gave that a go and no difference. On the default the only thing I had to change was the SATA from IDE to AHCI. It wouldn't start on IDE, Came back with faulty boot record on 3rd hdd. (I think)

Thanks Josh

The supermicro website is down but I should have the latest firmware for that card too.

http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=6423.msg80524#msg80524 mentions that the firmware as of oct 17 was 3.1.0.21 which is what I have.

I've just recieved a pm from another member jean-martin is running the gigabyte board with the SB850 controller and a supermicro card without issues.

Does anyone know if there are any differences with the 2 digit and the 4 digit POST test cards?

Thanks Josh

If all you changed in BIOS was to set it to AHCI instead of IDE, then chances are one of your hard drives is set as the primary boot device.  You need to tell the motherboard to boot from the unRAID flash drive.  Generally this involves telling the motherboard to treat the flash drive like a hard drive (hard drive emulation), but this varies from board to board.  Some can boot from the flash drive with no special configuration.

Since you disabled int13h on the SAS card, none of those drives should be bootable.  So chances are the motherboard is trying to boot from one of the other drives.

I'm guessing you've actually already done this, but you didn't specifically mention it anywhere, so I figure it can't hurt for me to mention it.  Sometimes the simplest solutions are the best...

Thanks Raj,

I found out why it wouldn't boot with IDE.

My WD 500GB cache drive (not advanced format) I had pinned it to run so that it could PUIS (Power Up In standby) When the computer turned on it couldn't get the SMART history and poss start the hdd and that was why IDE setting would cause it not to load. Taking that pin out it all boots in IDE but still clashes with the supermicro card.

Josh