M1115 help needed

[maxpower47]

I picked up an IBM M1115 off ebay a few days ago, but I'm having trouble getting it to work. The seller offered to flash it to IT mode before shipping, so I took him up on that. The system boots fine with the card installed without any drives attached, but with a drive attached, it gets to the LSI bios screen and just hangs. I've let it sit for about 15 mins there but it never tries booting the os (note: the os drive is not connected to the 1115, it is connected to the motherboard).

The LSI bios screen does display the details of the adapter (and seems to show that it is running in IT mode) and the drive. I've also tried both sas ports, different ends of the 8087 cable, different drives, and both pci-e x16 slots on the board, with no difference.

Any ideas? Or should I just send it back and not mess with it anymore?

Relevant specs:
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-MA785G
OS: Ubuntu Server 12.10
OS drive: Samsung 830 64GB
Array: mdadm raid 5
Array drives: 4x Samsung F4 2TB, 1x WD Red 2TB

 

[sub.mesa]

If you do not need the controller to boot your operating system, you do not need the option ROM facility. You could flash your controlled with IT-mode firmware while not flashing the Option ROM at all. This will cause the controller not to display anything during POST (power-on-self-test; when your computer starts). The controller will only work once booted in an operating system. For software RAID, this is probably what you want. The Option ROM can only cause BIOS issues since consumer boards are not properly tested with such equipment. The BIOS is the most buggy software on any computer. It is also the last bastion of proprietary software.

 

[Aesma]

Do you mean M1015 ? It could just be incompatible with your motherboard, it happens a lot with consumer boards.

 

[maxpower47]

Do you mean M1015 ? It could just be incompatible with your motherboard, it happens a lot with consumer boards.

No, 1115. Its a newer version apparently, but still an LSI 9211. Can reflashing it without the bios (mptsas2.rom) fix these kinds of compatibility issues?

 

[maxpower47]

Reflashing without the option rom worked. For the record, the M1115 can be flashed just like the 1015, same firmware and everything.

 

[Hammer!]

hi, is there aversion of the m1015 or m1115 that has an external connector?