all I see on that link is game trailer screenshots. take a picture of your screen and post it here. do you have any 6850 systems that do work to compare with?

Hmm the link works for me, try this: http://img822.imageshack.us/img822/7149/captureyndrhyywcq9r2n4g.jpg

I do have a bunch of other 6850's with identical configurations that work. Nothing has been changed in these broken ones. I'm guessing the backplane is dead but hoping there was something else I could try.

i was able to reproduce your issue after my last posting. setting the adapter back to defaults for both 1020 devices in the Cntrl A menu would resolve it.
What I changed was in the LSI menu (do Cntrl A at bootup), then enter on the <1020/1030 device, then hit enter on device properties, and scroll all the way to the right. if the scan scsi ID and scsi lun are set to no, the backplane wont show up on the boot up. if you set everything back to defaults (assuming you have the latest fw), it will set the scans back to yes and you should be good to go.

I'm assuming  you dont have a romb key inserted on the system board, and the setting in the bios for the controller in the integrated devices is set to scsi.
since you have working units, you could try swapping the cables and backplane boards to see where the issue is. Perhaps resetting the controller to defaults could help as well.

It was already set to yes for both, I reset to defaults anyway and it did not resolve it. What version of FW do you have? Mine is 5.06.06, I don't know if this is outdate - I haven't been able to find any updates for this. Not on Dell's site or LSI's.

1. No ROMB key

2. There is but a different model, full number on the barcode: CN-0UH920-69702-71V-0096, someone else was working on this issue before me, I believe this daughtercard is a replacement they bought to try to solve this issue.

3. Channel A cable goes to connector on left bottom side of mobo, next to the left-most CPU, and the connector is labeled channel A on the mobo. Channel B cable also goes on the left side but more in the middle, and the connector is labelled channel b.

4. SCSI

let me confirm your configuration to make sure it matches with mine and to make sure were set the same way
1. do you have a romb key attached to the system board? (small circuit board with blue plastic connectors)
2. do you have a duaghter board on the back of the backplane card (part number m7797 it on a long barcode label)
3. how are your cables running from the backplane card? where does channel A connect to and channel B (if applicable)
4. what is your controller set to in the integrated devices in the bios, scsi, raid?

well, i'm stumped, as far as I can tell, you have it all correct, although you seem to have one of the RoHS compliant systems based on the part number of the split backplane duaghter card, which is newer than my system. if you look at your system board on the left side by the channel b scsi connector, your motherboard part number should be RD318 or RG687 if not, you may have the wrong backplane daughter card. ideally, you could remove the daughter card as well to see if the BP is seen in that configuration. Its also possible that scsi cable A is bad. if you figure this out, please let us know.

Removing daughtercard produces a stop error about it missing, it still goes through detection and does not find the BP. I actually did have some new scsi a/b cables and trying those did not help either. Backplane is probably bad :/