PowerEdge 1600SC, Add-on SATA card is recognised once and is ignored after power cycle

Hi there,

Seem that both server and the card is in working condition. It can be detected but will be not available once a cold boot.

- A warm boot will be visible, but once a power cycle it disappears.

From here, I might suspect that it is a IRQ assignment for the PCIX card. Mind if you can assign 1 IRQ no# to the PCIX slot that you have installed the SATA card in.

Let me know the outcome.

Hi Joey, thanks for your reply.

Unfortunately this is something I have already tried. Actually I always try to assign unique IRQ's to devices that need high bandwidth. I also tried assigning high and low IRQ's to see if that made any difference. But to no avail. I have tried the card on IRQ's 5, 10 and 11. And even on 7, after disabling the LPT port.

Might be worth mentioning that there is also a PERC4 Raid controller installed on PCIX Bus 1, slot 1. I have the SATA controller installed on Bus 2, slot 1. I have also tried removing the PERC4 card, so all slots were empty besides the DC4300. But still nothing. So it can't be a conflict with another card. The Onboard LSI SCSI adapter is disabled. I also tried the DC4300 on Bus 1 , slot 1.

I tested the DC4300 card on a different system (in a 33MHz, 32bit PCI slot) and everything is fine, also after a power cycle / cold boot.

The fact that the card works fine the first time, means that it can hardly be a conflict with other hardware. It's working as we speak, i copied files onto an SSD and that went fine. Not fast but that was because the PERC4 just isn't that fast all the time. 

Hopefully you can come up with some other suggestions. Thanks again.

Hi

You did a great troubleshooting narrowing down the possibilities of what could be the root cause.

Based on my personal encountered issue, i had the same issue with 2 roots causes, 1 was the IRQ assignment and 1 would be the power to the card.

I tried to google the card that you are using, to find the specification of the voltage usage, but to no avail.

I researched that PERC4 uses 3.3V and below table are the voltage supplies to each slots.

Have you tried, with the card installed but no connection to any hard drives? a standalone card itself, just to check on the power usage?

Also, the card firmware, is it at the most updated version? http://www.dawicontrol.de/index.php?cmd=down&id=raid

Addition:

I see now in the Slot table that the slot order is upside down. In the table slot1 is the lowest slot, while in my texts i assumed the top slot (Which is PCIX 66MHz) as slot1. Also, the BIOS assumes top to bottom order of slots. Here is the order as far as i have been able to derive, top to bottom (Which is also supported by the BIOS reports):

1 - PCIX Bus 1, Slot 1 66MHz, 64 bit  (beige)

2 - PCIX Bus 1, Slot 2 idem

3- PCIX Bus 2, Slot 1 66/100MHz, 64 bit (Green)

4- PCIX Bus 2, Slot 2 idem

5 - PCI Bus Slot 1 33MHz, 32 bit (Beige)

6 - PCI Bus Slot 2 idem

In addition, the DC4300 supports all buses and voltages. (3.3 and 5V, 32 and 64 bit, 33/66/100/133MHz operation in all combinations). This is stated in documentation i found about the card.

Thanks again for the reply. Answering all of your questions in order :

Standalone card: Yes, tried that in nearly all of my troubleshooting. I have tried both actually, with and without disk(s) attached.

About the PREC/4 using 3.3 Volts: This is strange that it is seated in Bus1, Slot 1 because that is the slot it came shipped in when the server was pruchased in 2004. Are you sure Bus 1 doesn't also support 3.3V ? Also Bus supports 66MHz, i am sure of this because the BIOS reports this speed when the PERC/4 controller is installed.

DC4300 BIOS : I upgraded it from 4.30 to 4.31. No difference.

I even tried installing the DC4300 in  bus 1 slot 1, and the PERC/4 in bus 2, slot 1 (swapped out). No difference.

I wouldn't have posted this issue if it wasn't CHALLENGING  ;)  

As I stated in my first post, my thoughts on this are wandering towards the BIOS of the 1600SC. it's the latest BIOS (A12) and as far i have read most previous BIOS version have been brought out for mostly "new" CPU support. This server has an older Xeon 2.8 with 512k Cache. Do you think it is wise to downgrade the BIOS version, if possible to see if this makes a difference?

Thanks again!

Hi,

Seems all that I have thought of, you are ahead of it. Great troubleshooting.

It seems to be a BIOS issue, but I'm sure that 1600SC BIOS release will stop at A12. You can try downgrading, and see if it does work.

I can see other forums of similar issue, all relates to motherboard BIOS.

It wasn't detected at BIOS level, so I wouldn't want to request for a test of OS, eg: LiveCD.

If BIOS downgrade doesn't work, seems 1600SC is too old for the SATA card.

Hi Joey,