LSI 9260-4i / 8i fw / bios help needed

[trans am]

Hi guys I didn't to crap the other threads about this one so I made a new one.
so far I know I have the default lsi 9260-4i bios that shipped on the card. Its ver 3.07

fw is 12.01.0057

I went to the lsi site and got the latest drivers for win7 64 bit. DriverVer=09/28/2009,4.17.2.64
FW ver 12.0.1-0081

now what? the fw installation instructions say:

Installation:
=============
Use MegaCLI to flash the SAS controllers. The DOS version of MegaCLI is included
in the zip file. Windows and Linux MegaCLI can be downloaded from the download
section of www.megaraid.com.

Command syntax: MegaCli -adpfwflash -f AF2108_FW_Image.rom -a0


do I need to make a usb boot disk 1st and copy the files or is the firmware flasher in the ctrlH webbios screen somwhere and I'm not seeing it?

also what settings do you reccommend for these 2 summits, I want raid 0 for fastest performance stripe ... i was going to use 64kb but if there is a better one lemme know. I just want to get my crap installed so i can start playing wih them. Thanks in advance.

here's a ss of the settings screen. help me out please:

[SteveRo]

For the 9260-8i I used the latest FW and driver off the LSI website.
If the FW update procedure for the 4i is the same as for the 8i - it will take you some time setting up the command line.
You need to read the directions and take your time.

[Computurd]

dont flash the firmware from the cli command line. install an operating system then use the webbios from within that operating system. you can pm me for my msn messenger and i can walk you through it if you desire. there is a gui from the operating system that will allow you to do this. the main thing is to get an os installed. everything after that is cake. just set up yer raid and off you go.

[Computurd]

any updates?

[SteveRo]

dont flash the firmware from the cli command line. install an operating system then use the webbios from within that operating system. you can pm me for my msn messenger and i can walk you through it if you desire. there is a gui from the operating system that will allow you to do this. the main thing is to get an os installed. everything after that is cake. just set up yer raid and off you go.

I've never been able to get the LSI webbios to work, I turned on snmp in services.msc - what else do I need to do?

[Tiltevros]

you have to take out ur drivers from the ichxr and boot with LSI as 1rst boot device leave only CD/DVD enable (and put the cd(LSI) in the drive)

[trans am]

you have to take out ur drivers from the ichxr and boot with LSI as 1rst boot device leave only CD/DVD enable (and put the cd(LSI) in the drive)

Oh man ae you telling me steve hasn't made it into the damn webbios yet? You're in for a fun time. I've finally decided after 3 win7 installs and random reboots after the fact. its either I need to wipe these ssds and start fresh or its my mobo. I wanted to get the new gigagyte GA-790FXTA-UD5 since I heard about it so I went ahead and ordered it today.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813128415
it should be here in nyc tomorrow if it ships from the nj warehouse. In the meantime I'm going to wipe these ssds clean and then pull the board off so I'm all set.

@ steve. go here: http://www.lsi.com/DistributionSyste..._SAS_SW_UG.pdf

like turd says you need to set your mobo bios sata settings to native IDE and reboot then DEL to bios again and switch your drive priority to the raid controller. Then you can hit the ctrlH to get into the webios when it prompts you.

go straight to chapter 4 and start reading. follow the steps carefully. start with "New Configuration": Clears the existing configuration and lets
you create a new configuration.

do manual setup.

any questions, ask our buddy turd. He seems like he's had the best luck so far. I really think my problem is that I had a raid on amd750 then flashed to the new summit firmware and I never did a good ssd clean/prep before installing the os. I'll let you know what happens.

[SteveRo]

Oh man ae you telling me steve hasn't made it into the damn webbios yet? You're in for a fun time. I've finally decided after 3 win7 installs and random reboots after the fact. its either I need to wipe these ssds and start fresh or its my mobo. I wanted to get the new gigagyte GA-790FXTA-UD5 since I heard about it so I went ahead and ordered it today.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813128415
it should be here in nyc tomorrow if it ships from the nj warehouse. In the meantime I'm going to wipe these ssds clean and then pull the board off so I'm all set.

@ steve. go here: http://www.lsi.com/DistributionSyste..._SAS_SW_UG.pdf

like turd says you need to set your mobo bios sata settings to native IDE and reboot then DEL to bios again and switch your drive priority to the raid controller. Then you can hit the ctrlH to get into the webios when it prompts you.

go straight to chapter 4 and start reading. follow the steps carefully. start with "New Configuration": Clears the existing configuration and lets
you create a new configuration.

do manual setup.

any questions, ask our buddy turd. He seems like he's had the best luck so far. I really think my problem is that I had a raid on amd750 then flashed to the new summit firmware and I never did a good ssd clean/prep before installing the os. I'll let you know what happens.

ok I was confused - I have been in the webbios - what I haven't been able to get to work is the megaraid app (within windows) for the 9260 (and the 9211?).

[trans am]

DId you get this one? its located in the misc part of the lsi dl section / MegaCLI - Windows
(MegaRAID Release 4.1.2): http://www.lsi.com/cm/License.do?url...eous&locale=EN

[Computurd]

the MSM is what you are referring to steve. you install it within your os and allows you to change settings 'on the fly' without having to reboot. it is called specifically the "megaraid storage manager". not the CLI that sucks and i have no experience with the command line interface.
easy to use os version is the MSM. dude you will be able to tweak your settings as you go, with0out reboots, and may help you unlock some more performance. inside the zipped folder is going to be a disk1 file, go into there and run setup http://lsi.com/storage_home/products...le=EN&remote=1

[trans am]

yikes sorry man. I was waiting for you to step in. I tried my best to help steve out. I've gone as far as removing my board and completely redoing my h20 lines. I didn't notice any actual leakage but when I examined my board and cards I saw speckles. this could be random dust or it could be splatter off a bad connection. I just have too much expensive hardware in there to take any chances. I removed everything and took the board out and did a stock cooling tabletop/caseless setup until I can figure this out. I'm reinstalling os atm.

[Computurd]

awesome im in google chat if you need anything, hope you have great luck!

[trans am]

awesome im in google chat if you need anything, hope you have great luck!

well needless to say after the os install it rebooted again. I got the UDF5 today so thats pretty rad. It was time to let that 790GXA3+ go anyway. This UDF5 kicks ass. I just want to get this raid card ripping so I can insulate the board. Its screaming for sub zero!

heres some pics because everyone loves pics!




After i set up the board that massive skythe orochi cooler I plugged in the same raid set and the 92604i
it wouldnt recogize it in this board. I'm guessing its either its confused and webbios needs to set on this board. or since there are 2x16 slots and a dedicated x8 below it (i used the x8 pcie) maybe i need to try it in the other x16 slot directly below the vga card.

Heres my plan: remove the LSI. plug in a trusty 80gb raptor and install os. install chipet drivers and all the usual crap. shut off system/ plug in the LSI only no drives attached. boot off the raptor and flash the damn LSI to latest FW.

I would also like to add that when I had the 9260 plugged into the x8 slot and removed it. I noticed the stock aluminum heatsink on the card was smoldering hot. You could burn your fingers on it. I decided to do a little ghetto mod:




see pics:

removed the heatsing pins with a needle nose pliers.


wiped the chip and the heatsink with alcohol.




applied as5 paste
took an old stock amd 939 cooler and pryed the fan off.
I took 3 zip ties and threaded them through the extra holes in the card diagonally and now I have some active cooling.

[Biker]

Ghetto mod FTW!

My 9260-8i got pretty toasty as well so I rigged up a 120mm fan just underneath blowing directly on to the card's heatsink....

No more overheats

I wish there was some kind of temperature info in the bios / MSM software like with some Adaptec cards so you could keep an eye on things...

[Computurd]

holy mother you are brave! lol i dont wanna toy with my baby, i jsut put a fan up above, cause mine is sandwiched between video cards...

[trans am]

hell yes! Nice setup man. I love the pics! Well here's my latest update.
remember my fail safe plan from yesterday?
"...... remove the LSI. plug in a trusty 80gb raptor and install os. install chipet drivers and all the usual crap. shut off system/ plug in the LSI only no drives attached. boot off the raptor and flash the damn LSI to latest FW."

well I did all of the above and did some bios settings through process of elimination.
I tried everything and still no clue. I can get this gigabyte board to post fine. I updated the bios. to the latest one. I even set the pci/peg/peg1/peg2 boot order to the peg2(last pcie x16 slot) I had the raid card currently installed on. still no luck. what happens is after post the system will start to scan for hard drives and it finds the raid card and you get the webbios hit ctrl H message. well this is not happening on the gigabyte board. I just get a blk screen with a blinking cursor. the only way around this one was to either remove the card completely and boot off the onboard sata on the board or plug in a 2 pin jumper to pins JT9 on the 9260 this is basically the cmos clear on the card. if you remove the jumper and reboot the same thing occurs. next I just left the jumper in and booted off a raptor to see if I could at least get into windows. It worked except when i tried to install the drivers in device manager the card wasn't recognized. Its as if it wasnt plugged in. I removed the jumper while in windows and hit scan for hardware changes and still nothing... I was so frusterated I just shut the damn thing off and went to bed. Today I got out of work a bit early so I could call LSI and Gigabyte tech support and see if they had any tricks. LSI lev3 support said since the card was recognised in the biostar board it might be that the gigabyte x16 slots are only set up for vga cards and the card wont work in it. or she says its DOA and I should rma to newegg. no help so I called gigabyte tech support. I seemed to know more about their product than they did but they said I should swap back to the biostar and see if it works still so at least I know if its the board or the card. he also wrote a ticket to the bios engineers in asia to allow other pcie devices other than vga to work on the x16/x8 slots. I took his advice and swapped boards ...im back on the biostar now. raid webbios boots up and looks fine. I'm gonna try to reinstall os off a hdd and try to flash the card once I have a stable windows environment. If I get a good flash I will reinstall the gigabyte and see if it shows this time. If not then I'm rmaing the 189 board to newegg and trying something else. I'm always down for a hardware challenge but this is getting beyond challenging. its just annoying at this point.

[Computurd]

yes i agree, you are definitely having a rough go at it. i hope that you get the problem solved in short order, and i do no think that it is a coincidence that the guy

he also wrote a ticket to the bios engineers in asia to allow other pcie devices other than vga to work on the x16/x8 slots

that sounds like this may be some issue they are aware of. the support techs at the respective companies can help you far more than i can at this point. i cant wait to see your results once you get it sorted though!

[trans am]

yes i agree, you are definitely having a rough go at it. i hope that you get the problem solved in short order, and i do no think that it is a coincidence that the guy

that sounds like this may be some issue they are aware of. the support techs at the respective companies can help you far more than i can at this point. i cant wait to see your results once you get it sorted though!

the ud5 is such a new board it will take some time and now chinese newyear. Its gonna be a while. Lsi said Its designed for server boards. I shoulda told her to call you to talk some sense into them. I also posted in your thread at ocz forums to see if I could reach a wider audience. right now im back on the biostar installing os with the card in with no drives off the card. Just gonna see if I can make it into windows with it in safely and try to flash it. brb

[Computurd]

yes there is a group of about 15 guys who all have the controller who post in there or watch that thread. i cant believe that thread i started when i first received the controller has 28,732 views now! it has more than all of their stickies with the exception of 2! hopefully one of them will have an idea or a similar problem. ill be on fer awhile tonight in google chat too

[trans am]

Please point me to any posts of users on AMD rigs. preferably sb750 sb. I feel like the kid that didn't get invited to the birthday party or the guy at the snobby palm beach yaught club that can't get past the door because he doens't have a jacket on and they have a strict dress code. everyones laughing at me. I'm glad there are still some nice guys on xs like you. this site used to be the holy grail of overclocking and pc enthusiasts when I joined in 2002. but this past year has gotten so polluted with these kids that just post snide remarks and review links and sales spam and have nothing else to contribute because they haven't dealt with the hardware firsthand. once in a while you get a couple of guys in a good thread and by the end you they have completely disected the hardware and found every in and out until there is nothing left to know. remember when I told you your 9211/9260 thread you started was going to be BIG. it doesn't surprise me one bit that it 30k views and its only been a week.

[daitro]

I'm in exactly the same position as trans am, with a LSI 9260-4i. I'll attempt to install the OS on a separate SATA drive and then run the Windows based configuration. I was able to get to the Web-based configuration within the bios, but when it came to allocating a virtual drive size with two ssd in an array, the keyboard lost all functionality..until i pressed Del, ensuing a full computer reset :/. Can't seem to flash from the command prompt when booting from thumb drive, either. So, I've taken heed to your advice Computurd and will most certainly not attempt to flash it again, in that way.
I may have to hit you up on Google Chat Computurd.

Off-topic, is the redundancy back up battery worth purchasing for the card?

[trans am]

I'm in exactly the same position as trans am, with a LSI 9260-4i. I'll attempt to install the OS on a separate SATA drive and then run the Windows based configuration. I was able to get to the Web-based configuration within the bios, but when it came to allocating a virtual drive size with two ssd in an array, the keyboard lost all functionality..until i pressed Del, ensuing a full computer reset :/. Can't seem to flash from the command prompt when booting from thumb drive, either. So, I've taken heed to your advice Computurd and will most certainly not attempt to flash it again, in that way.
I may have to hit you up on Google Chat Computurd.

Off-topic, is the redundancy back up battery worth purchasing for the card?

I'm glad I'm not the only one. I also made a usb boot drive and copied the FW files and the megacli crap and I hit DIR to see if they were showing up but when I ran the dos commands to flash I got a message about not enough ram or something like that. Today when I was on the phone with LSi I asked about the bbu (bat backup) she recommended if you are using ssds in raid you should have it for the write back cache function to work properly. the correct one for the 9260-4i is iBBU07. http://www.lsi.com/DistributionSyste...iBBU07_QIG.pdf

This might have been why my system was rebooting or she is just trying to sell us more crap we dont need. Daitro is the board in your sig the one you are using the card on? I might be able give you some bios settings to make it work. Otherwise I suggest doing what I am and get a trusty sata drive and install it on the onboard mobo sata and remove the lsi and try to get a clean windows install and install all your chipset crap and then the lsi driver. then see if you can plug in the card and boot off the same drive you just installed on and see if windows sees the card and installs the drivers for it. once you do that maybe you can finally flash that sucker. im doing the same thing. I dont have tomorrow off from work so i'm gonna be on here all night.

[daitro]

I'm glad I'm not the only one. when I was on the phone with LSi I asked about the bbu (bat backup) she recommended if you are using ssds in raid you should have it for the write back cache function to work properly. This might have been why my system was rebooting or she is just trying to sell us more crap we dont need. Daitro is the board in your sig the one you are using the card on? I might be able give you some bios settings to make it work. Otherwise I suggest doing what I am and get a trusty sata drive and install it on the onboard mobo sata and remove the lsi and try to get a clean windows install and install all your chipset crap and then the lsi driver. then see if you can plug in the card and boot off the same drive you just installed on and see if windows sees the card and installs the drivers for it. once you do that maybe you can finally flash that sucker. im doing the same thing. I dont have tomorrow off from work so i'm gonna be on here all night.

I'm familiar with the write back - BBU function shown within the Web Bios. Now you've clarified that, I'll definitely be purchasing that. Though, this will be running through my UPS, but double redundancy is never a bad thing.

Yes, that is the board I'm using with the LSI card.

If anyone else, Computurd especially, can offer any other advice, I'll be following the same route as trans am with a SATA drive.

[trans am]

dont flash the firmware from the cli command line. install an operating system then use the webbios from within that operating system. you can pm me for my msn messenger and i can walk you through it if you desire. there is a gui from the operating system that will allow you to do this. the main thing is to get an os installed. everything after that is cake. just set up yer raid and off you go.

omg finally after all this crap I made it into windows with the card installed and its stable. I have no drives attached to the card just the sas/sata cable is plugged into the card. i'm ready as I'll ever be to flash it. I cannot afford any mistakes since it took me this long to get it this far. Comp. please pm me or hit me on google chat and lets flash this sucker before you go to bed.

[daitro]

omg finally after all this crap I made it into windows with the card installed and its stable. I have no drives attached to the card just the sas/sata cable is plugged into the card. i'm ready as I'll ever be to flash it. I cannot afford any mistakes since it took me this long to get it this far. Comp. please pm me or hit me on google chat and lets flash this sucker before you go to bed.

I'm quite surprised LSI isn't being inundated with customers having problems with the firmware released with the 9260-4i/8i!

You're ahead of me, I'm installing Windows as we speak on my spare drive.