Support for Boot Block Specification (BBS) on IC7

[StarTech]

I am setting up an eXtremeRaid 200 controller on an ABIT IC-7. When I asked Mylex support what BIOS flash to pick for the upgrade, they said, select the one for your motherboard depending on if it supports Boot Block Specification ( BBS) or not.

Anybody knows what that means and if the IC7 does or does not support it?

 

[StarTech]

^

 

[tcsenter]

Boot Block is one or more secured blocks of flash NVRAM in the BIOS chip that stores just enough code to provide basic system boot/recovery support in the event the system BIOS becomes corrupted or damaged. It can be used for other things, too, but that is the typical application WRT mainboards. The vast majority of mainboards have been using Boot Block Flash part numbers for a couple years now.

However, are you sure that Mylex isn't referring to whether your RAID board supports Boot Block and not your system mainboard? I see that Mylex has packaged all firmware updates together for several different RAID controllers. Some may not feature Boot Block, while others do.

Otherwise, I would think it safe to assume the IC7 supports BB, but then again we know what can happen when one assumes...

 

[dmcowen674]

Originally posted by: tcsenter
Boot Block is one or more secured blocks of flash NVRAM in the BIOS chip that stores just enough code to provide basic system boot/recovery support in the event the system BIOS becomes corrupted or damaged. It can be used for other things, too, but that is the typical application WRT mainboards. The vast majority of mainboards have been using Boot Block Flash part numbers for a couple years now.

However, are you sure that Mylex isn't referring to whether your RAID board supports Boot Block and not your system mainboard? I see that Mylex has packaged all firmware updates together for several different RAID controllers. Some may not feature Boot Block, while others do.

Otherwise, I would think it safe to assume the IC7 supports BB, but then again we know what can happen when one assumes...

Didn't know you are a Tech or Engineer TC. Good to see.

New technique as of late is actual redundant chips, one fails, the other is ready to go and you can then go and re-load the other chip with vaild code again. Great stuff.

 

[StarTech]

After another email interaction and some google, I got to the conclusion the mylex tech guy may have been referring to BIOS Boot Specification or something like that, which I really found a standard out there, and that defines how devices insert themselves in the boot sequence and how the interact with in13 and int18 to report back a boot fail and go to next.

The fact is that I was having trouble booting from a JBOD and after I applied the BBS bios version i was able to make it work.
It is ture that I did not try the lates non BBS version, but i have the feeling that i used the correct one.

As for the boot block, as part of the controller firmware, there is another piece that is mandatory and i had to upgrade that is the "boot block". I don't know if it refers to what you guys are talking..

In any case, I got passed the first round of problems, and start to undertand the ezraid configuration... I found another one, that the linux driver only supports 7 partitions in a raid drive. I was getting these odd error on /rd/c0d0p8 on anaconda trying to install RH8. A silly limitation in the mind of the DAC960 driver developer....

thanks guys

 

[tcsenter]

Didn't know you are a Tech or Engineer TC. Good to see.

Neither.