Foxconn BloodRage Issues / BIOS Bugs Thread

[RayderR6]

I might have found a BIOS issue with an OCZ Apex SSD and the Bloodrage (I am eagerly awaiting ilsant0’s reply on his G.Skills), it could be an Apex issue or a ICH10R issue. I am using G13 and in RAID mode.

Don’t sweat that my post text it a little off screen to the left, this happens when I use the svga pc port on my LCD TV, if I used HDMI, it would be centered.

The first pic is part of the bios boot to come up before the Intel Storage Manager. The first 2 lines appear and about a second later it will list your sata port devices. Normally that list will zip by, but there is a 2 second delay trying to read port 3 where my Apex SSD is so it is easy at this point to hit Pause/Break and take the pic.
What is going to happen next is the port 3 read will be “Reset Port Error!!” instead of “OCZ Apex_SSD” like it reads everywhere else in either RAID or IDE mode. Once this error displays, it and the next line will zip by (I have not been able to hit the Pause/Break just right to get the pic because it zips by too fast, but that is what it says) and goes into Intel Storage Manager (pic 2) and you can see that it recognizes the Apex.

Now before I added the Apex, you may have read that I resolved my RAID installation issue (IDE installation has always worked well) with the port placement of the optical rom and confirmed everything was fine to install Vista x64 on a RAID volume and loaded bloodrage drivers and utilities. I was so happy to see things working the way it should now, that I left the volume installation alone and set out to install on the SSD while I still had the raid volume installation intact. Here is where the pics come into play.

The vista installation went just fine on the SSD and it reboots 3 times like usual to complete installation, but keep in mind my optical is set to first boot device. I did see the “Reset Port Error!!”, but didn’t think much of it as things were going fine. Now vista is done and I put the bloodrage DVD in to install chipset drivers on the SSD installation and reboot and I get a BootMgr missing when loading windows.

I now have a dual OS boot system menu as one might expect.

Key points: My SSD is first HDD boot priority and the Vista DVD is no longer in the optical. I change the HDD boot priority to raid volume first then SSD and I get my dual OS boot menu again and the first is still the SSD install, so I select it and I’m in the SSD installation. I put the vista DVD back in the optical, restart and put the SSD back to first in HDD priority and I get my dual OS boot screen again.

The obvious facts are it can’t boot from the SSD itself, it either has to have A) the vista dvd in the optical and have optical as first boot priority or B) it has to boot from the raid volume installation (by making it first HDD boot priority) and when doing this I don’t have to have the optical in first system boot priority. This was what I meant by Billy Gates wouldn’t like, I actually have to have vista loaded twice just to get the SSD to boot. Either solution is unacceptable for a configuration of course.

To dispell any possiblity of it being a installation on a single drive while a raid volume is just a data drive with the ICH10R, I did throw in another platter and installed vista on it. It all went just fine and no errors.

I think the whole BootMgr missing when using the SSD as first HDD and having the HDD as first system boot priority could be traced to the “Reset Port Error!!” , but it could be an OCZ Apex or any SSD issue as a boot drive on a ICH10R or X58 chipset config while in RAID mode. I plan on opening a thread at OCZ to talk to Tony about it in hopes to narrow down the problem.

To help me figure this out, I would love to hear from anybody who has a SSD (1 or more) as a boot drive in RAID mode (on bloodrage of course) chime in with how the first pic menu states their SSD, what SSD you’re using, BIOS version, physical sata port configurations and any other info you deem important. Thanks.

If any of the Bloodrage BIOS engineers (Saaya, BenchZowner) can read my post and have any thoughts about this “Reset Port Error!!”, I would appreciate. I have my sata cables arranged in such a way that I can easily get this setup going again and still return easily to my IDE (i.e. I can be the gunniea pig for this issues resolution).

I've got P03, P04, G13, G15, G16 and G19a. I will likely check out P04, but have no intention on any other G's unless there is a need (SSD issue?) or an advantage. I'm a little gunshy on BIOS updates that way.

Thanks.