Xflashing M1015: -cleanflash fails

[MMacD]

Although I get a "base address too high - not supported" warning, my

megarec -writesbr 0 sbrempty.bin

claimed to have worked.

But the

megarec -cleanflash 0

failed, error 64. I can't find any documentation on the megarec utility, so I don't know what error 64 is. I suppose it might be "file not found", since it seems to have been expecting a filename after the zero, but since no filename is given on the howto examples, I don't know what to make of that.

SO my questions are

- is the "base address" warning serious, or is it just complaining because I'm trying to talk to it via DOS? If serious, is it fixable? If fixable, could someone point me at the howto?

- how do I get past the -cleanflash error? The utility only suggests that I try again, which I did. Repeatedly, but to no avail.

I'm trying to do the xflash on a dev machine, not the one I'll use for the NAS (the mamaboard for which I've not purchased yet. It will probably be an A1SRM-2558F.).

This system has a GA970A-UD3P, with a UEFI BIOS. I made a bootable FreeDOS thumb using Rufus 2.4. It booted fine, saw the card, and everything seemed to go well until the -cleanflash failed.

Thanks in advance for any clues, pointers, et similar.

 

[BigDave]

The base address too high warning has me concerned, try running the first step again, see the thumbnail for reference.
This is the photo I took of my first crossflash of a M1015 card.

Here's a couple of files that may help you.
sas2008 files found here

 

[cyberjock]

I'm not too familiar with the "base address too high - not supported" error. But I'll provide two pieces of advice you can try.

1. I've seen a disproportionately high number of AMD machines not take well to flashing. No clue why. Yes, I've seen some Intel platforms not let you flash it (ironically, Intel brand motherboards). But more AMD than Intel. So when flashing I recommend avoiding AMD based systems and Intel brand motherboards.

2. FreeDOS has some weird quirks with flashing. I don't know if FreeDOS is the cause or if the DOS tools just are made to work with MS-DOS stuff that is proprietary. That being said, my USB stick that I use for flashing BIOSes, IPMIs, and other cards is a Windows 98 SE boot disk. Its DOS seems to be "better" than the old DOS 6.22 and it has never failed me.

So if I were you, I'd grab some Intel based system (that doesn't have an Intel motherboard) and make a Windows 98 SE DOS boot disk and see if that helps.

Unfortunately, if you have to reboot or power off the machine, there's the possibility that the card will be bricked. Allegedly, there are some ways you can find the card and write to it using the PCI address, but I've never had to use them because I've always followed the two rules I mentioned above.

Good luck!

 

[BigDave]

cyberjock, I'm guessing that the dos/32A application file has to be present (on the flashdrive) for the megarec utility to run correctly.
I may be wrong of course, but that version was missing from my first attempt (18 months ago) and it was part of
the files during my first crossflashing success.

 

[jgreco]

Definitely try again on a different machine if you can.

 

[MMacD]

This morning the -cleanflash seems to have worked. But now I get the dreaded "failed to init PAL".

I'm a little stuck as to using other machines. My dev machines are all AMD with the exception of my toy webserver, which has only one slot wide enough to take the M1015 card, and it's already occupied.

I've tried calling shellx64.efi that's on the thumb drive, but of course freedos has no idea what to do with it and, while the mamaboard has an inbuilt uefi shell, there seems to be something hokey about getting it to load (the docs say I should tell the bios that I'm running win8x64, which I'm not (xp), turn off csm support, reboot, and select "uefi shell" off the boot menu) because so far it hasn't worked. The closest I've got is to get uefi to boot freedos, which is of no slightest help at all.

Does anyone know how to make a usb (or cd, I'm not fussy) that's bootable to a UEFI shell? There doesn't seem to be any useful info on the web, or either I'm not using the right search terms.

 

[TXAG26]

This morning the -cleanflash seems to have worked. But now I get the dreaded "failed to init PAL".

I'm a little stuck as to using other machines. My dev machines are all AMD with the exception of my toy webserver, which has only one slot wide enough to take the M1015 card, and it's already occupied.

I've tried calling shellx64.efi that's on the thumb drive, but of course freedos has no idea what to do with it and, while the mamaboard has an inbuilt uefi shell, there seems to be something hokey about getting it to load (the docs say I should tell the bios that I'm running win8x64, which I'm not (xp), turn off csm support, reboot, and select "uefi shell" off the boot menu) because so far it hasn't worked. The closest I've got is to get uefi to boot freedos, which is of no slightest help at all.

Does anyone know how to make a usb (or cd, I'm not fussy) that's bootable to a UEFI shell? There doesn't seem to be any useful info on the web, or either I'm not using the right search terms.

I may be mistaken, but the beauty of UEFI is you just copy all of the needed files into the USB key's root directory and it should boot right up (it uses the UEFI bios from the motherboard). I actually just did this yesterday flashing two LSI 2308 controllers and I just ran the .nsh file and it auto-flashed everything.

 

[TXAG26]

BTW, I also use Rufus to create bootable USB keys and CD/DVD/ISO images.

https://rufus.akeo.ie/

-

 

[Ericloewe]

Some motherboards do not include an EFI shell.

For those, include shellx64.efi in the root of the device.

Also, do not confuse DOS and the UEFI shell. The latter will not run under DOS. DOS is the legacy alternative.