RAID Card Won't Let Me POST

[JonElf]

I have a Gigabyte GA-EP45-DS3R which works except for when I plug in my LSI MegaRAID SAS 8344ELP storage controller, then there is no display to the screen at all. I have tried it without the storage controller and it has a display and everything is fine. Are there some BIOs settings I'm missing? The video card and storage card I believe are functioning correctly.

 

[supremelaw]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16813128344
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...gaRAID%20SAS%208344ELP


That RAID card has an x4 edge connector,
which won't fit in any of the x1 slots.

Also, I don't know if this matters, but
Newegg's specs state that the secondary
(orange) x16 slot is assigned x8 PCI-E lanes.


Without claiming to be an expert,
I have seen reviews in which the
video card and RAID card switched slots:
RAID card into the primary (blue) x16 slot,
and video card into the secondary (orange) x16 slot.

x8 lanes should be enough for most video cards.

Also, there may be options in your BIOS
that permit you to assign PCI-Express lanes
differently.

I'm an ASUS user, so I don't have any experience
with Gigabyte motherboards.


I hope this helps.


Sincerely yours,
/s/ Paul Andrew Mitchell, Inventor and
Webmaster, Supreme Law Library

All Rights Reserved without Prejudice

 

[Rubycon]

Sounds like a problem with an overlapping BIOS address range between your graphics card and your RAID BIOS. I've seen this happen before and sometimes there's no solution other than to try a different motherboard or video card!

 

[supremelaw]

Rubycon: good insight! I would also add that the BIOS I'm using
does support options that alter the priority assigned to any given
PCI-Express slot. It might help to hunt for such options, and
then to use "trial-and-error" aka ye ol' fall-back method
(time-consuming, but potentially fault-isolating).

With these RAID cards, your insight also makes me suspect that
they may also require an "aperture" -- like the former AGP aperture --
particularly if they support on-board cache memory and
the device driver uses DMA.


Sincerely yours,
/s/ Paul Andrew Mitchell, Inventor and
Webmaster, Supreme Law Library

All Rights Reserved without Prejudice

 

[supremelaw]

Here's the article which successfully swapped the video card and RAID controller:

http://www.tweaktown.com/revie..._of_storage/index.html

[begin excerpt]

During our testing, we used Gigabyte?s P965-DQ6 motherboard based on the Intel P965 chipset. It has a couple of PCI Express x16 slots but they don?t both operate at x16 lanes electronically. When using a single PCI-E graphics card in the top slot (due to the limitations of the P965 chipset), the second slot will only operate at x4 lanes electrically. And while you?d think that would still be enough bandwidth available for everyone to play nicely together, because there are in fact two HPT controller chips on the RocketRAID 2340, performance is actually halved as we proved during testing ? RAID 0 burst rate speeds were almost exactly half of what the performance should be when provided the full x8 lanes of bandwidth.

The cure was quite simple ?- we simply removed the RAID controller and the graphics card and switched them around. Now the HPT 2340 was operating at its full x8 lanes bandwidth in the top slot and the graphics card was kicked back down to x4 lanes in the second slot.

[end excerpt]


We found this article while we were researching the HPT 2340:
it's now installed and running beautifully in our P5W64 WS Professional
workstation: its four x16 mechanical slots are assigned 8-8-4-8 lanes
when a second x8 card is installed in slots 2 or 4.

The other BIOS lane assignment is 16-0-4-0 (i.e. x16 card in slot 1
and x4 card in slot 3).

This information is from the ASUS User Manual.


Sincerely yours,
/s/ Paul Andrew Mitchell, Inventor and
Webmaster, Supreme Law Library

All Rights Reserved without Prejudice

 

[JonElf]

Thanks for the replys, I have tried switching the cards around in the slots however it still shows no display when I try and boot with both cards seated. In the manual it states that the orange slot is a PCI Express 2.0 x16 slot (x8 electrical) and the top slot is (16x/8x electrical) which you would think would be enough. Also there is no settings in BIOs that seem to have anything to do with the PCI Express slots except Video Init.

 

[supremelaw]

Let me see if I can download the User Manual for that motherboard.

If I succeed and if I find anything that might be worth trial-and-error experiments,
I'll get back to you here.


Also, what happens if you install your video card in the orange slot
with no RAID card installed?


Sincerely yours,
/s/ Paul Andrew Mitchell, Inventor and
Webmaster, Supreme Law Library

All Rights Reserved without Prejudice

 

[supremelaw]

If you have one in your parts inventory (i.e. "boneyard"):

Another experiment is to try installing an older PCI video card
into one of the 2 white PCI slots. That should route video traffic
thru different members of the chipset.


Sincerely yours,
/s/ Paul Andrew Mitchell, Inventor and
Webmaster, Supreme Law Library

All Rights Reserved without Prejudice

 

[supremelaw]

Also, are your HDDs connected during POST, or not?

Some RAID controllers won't initialize unless the HDDs are connected.


p.s. I'm trying to get the User Manual from Gigabyte's website,
but their web pages send me into vicious circles. Do you have
a User Manual that you can email to me?

supremelawfirm AT gmail.com


Sincerely yours,
/s/ Paul Andrew Mitchell, Inventor and
Webmaster, Supreme Law Library

All Rights Reserved without Prejudice

 

[supremelaw]

http://www.lsi.com/files/docs/...sas/mr_sas_stor_ug.pdf

Replace the computer cover, and reconnect the AC power
cords. Turn power on to the host computer. Make sure that the
power is turned on to the SAS devices, SATA II devices, or both
are powered up before or at the same time that the power is
turned on to the host computer. If the computer is powered up
before a SAS device, SATA II device, or both, the device might
not be recognized.

[end excerpt]


Sincerely yours,
/s/ Paul Andrew Mitchell, Inventor and
Webmaster, Supreme Law Library

All Rights Reserved without Prejudice

 

[supremelaw]

Here's another subtlety to add to ye ol' trial-and-error repertoire:

Your processor is probably so fast that your HDDs
will have a longer opportunity to spin-up fully
if you switch the BIOS to "slow POST" mode
(or something like that).

On ASUS motherboards, the "slow POST" option
sends the BIOS into a longer RAM check, which
gives all HDDs a longer opportunity to spin-up fully.

This option is a long-shot, because I understand you to
be saying that you get absolutely no video whatsoever
when both cards are installed, regardless of the slots chosen.

Thus, your BIOS can't even do the lowest level of video
output to your video card (if I am understanding you correctly).


Sincerely yours,
/s/ Paul Andrew Mitchell, Inventor and
Webmaster, Supreme Law Library

All Rights Reserved without Prejudice

 

[JonElf]

Without the RAID card the computer boots up no problem with the video card in either slot.

I do not believe I have a plain old PCI video card laying around unfortunately.

The hard drives are connected in the exact same order they were with the last motherboard, I have tried it without them connected as well but that didn't change anything.

I'll try and see if I can find a slow POST option or something along those lines. Also that is exactly what's happen, no matter what slots are used when both the video card and RAID controller are installed there is no signal to the monitor, if the RAID card is removed it works.

 

[supremelaw]

Rubycon's excellent suggestion sounds like the best theory to date:

> I've seen this happen before and
> sometimes there's no solution other than to try a different motherboard or video card!


FYI: I wasn't able to locate the User Manual for your motherboard.

Also, I noticed that there are some jumpers on your RAID controller.

Since you seem to be running out of options,
have you looked into those jumpers for a possible solution?

And, if I were you, I would not give up until I have first
heard from Tech Support at LSI: your problem may be
something which they need to fix, and you would then
be eligible to RMA that RAID controller.


Sincerely yours,
/s/ Paul Andrew Mitchell, Inventor and
Webmaster, Supreme Law Library

All Rights Reserved without Prejudice

 

[JonElf]

I've tried putting the card in a reset mode to try and get it to display something, still nothing, sorry for the late reply it's been a busy day.

Also since it's an OEM card branded by HP LSI won't have anything to do with it, I've called them before and all I got was "sorry we can't help you, call HP".

 

[RebateMonger]

When a RAID or sound card (X-Fi, in particular) conflict with a video card, I haven't had any luck in fixing it. I've tried changing slots, changing I/O addresses, etc. with no improvement.

 

[JonElf]

Yeah, this is getting kind of dumb, I think I'll just take my old motherboard where the controller actually works in Linux only and just make a file server with old parts.