[ipxe-devel] exprimenting with TG3 cards and motherboard

[Geert Stappers]

Previous-Subject: Re: [ipxe-devel] iPxe ruined my TG3 cards and motherboard :(

So how I do read "I blame you" in the previous subject.



On Thu, Jan 30, 2020 at 08:39:16PM +0100, freebsd at tango.lu wrote:
> On 2020-01-30 20:31, Christian Nilsson wrote:
> > On Thu, 30 Jan 2020 at 20:09, <freebsd at tango.lu> wrote:
> > > 
> > > Hello,
> > > 
> > > I had an older Tyan S4882 with the following onboard NICs:
> > > 
> > > 02:09.0 Ethernet controller [0200]: Broadcom Corporation NetXtreme BCM5704 Gigabit Ethernet [14e4:1648] (rev 03)
> > > 02:09.1 Ethernet controller [0200]: Broadcom Corporation NetXtreme BCM5704 Gigabit Ethernet [14e4:1648] (rev 03)
> > > 
> > > I have built the rom:
> > > 
> > > 78848 Jan 29 18:22 14e41648.rom
> > > 
> > > and followed the TG3 guide: https://ipxe.org/howto/romburning/tg3
> > > 
> > > Got the latest ipxe from git, built my rom.
> > > I have only flashed card 0.
> > > The flashing process was successful.
> > > 
> > > After reboot I noticed that iPXE is in the BIOS as it should but
> > > when trying to boot from iPXE the monitor signal goes out then the
> > > board goes into POS 06 and constantly beeps like an ambulance. Same
> > > thing happens when I tried to go into the iPXE control panel with
> > > CTRL+B at boot. So any time the motherboard try to boot from iPXE
> > > it dies.
> > > 
> > > To make things WORSE this is NOT just affecting the boot rom but
> > > the NIC itself got screwed up as well. For example I tried to copy
> > > larger amount of data through it in Linux and same thing happened,
> > > monitor turned off and the board died with error code 06.
> > > 
> > > 
> > > So what I have tried next to upgrade the Tyan BIOS from v1.08 to
> > > the latest 1.10. This helped somewhat because at least the board
> > > doesnt die with black screen but it hangs forever on iPXE with
> > > initialising devices...  It's still not possible to go in the iPXE
> > > control panel either.
> > > 
> > > After I reflashed the motherboards BIOS btw I reflashed iPXE as well
> > > because in the new one it was not in the BIOS initially.
> > > 
> > > 
> > > So any suggestions what to do now?
> > > 
> > > Unfortunately I did NOT backup the original firmware from the card,
> > > you should've include that in the tutorial as well :(
> > > 
> > > On broadcoms site when I try to search 5704 it's like 200 downloads
> > > and none of them it.
> > > 
> > > Since I did not update the PXE code in NIC1 would it be possible to
> > > pull out the PXE code from that and load it back to NIC0?
> > > 
> > 
> > So, did you try the driver build of iPXE before flashing it?
> > If the machine was "bricked" and you got no signal to monitor, how did
> > you manage to flash bios?
> > 
> > I would suggest that you first of disable the nic roms, and the nics.
> > Figure out which tools you can use to make backups, and then go from
> > there.
> > 
> > The only reasonable way that something like this could happen that I
> > can think of is if you have some kind of RAM error issue in the
> > machine. So make sure that is good (run memtest86+ or similar as a
> > start)
> Hello,
> 
> It is only "bricked" if I chose iPXE for booting but as I said the machine
> can now freeze during large file transfers through the nics. No it did not
> have any hardware or memory issues before that I throughly tested it.
> 
> Can that be an issue that I did not update the PXE code in adapter 1?

} Can you explain me which ROM code is used on my computer?

No


> I would have no problem further experimenting with iPXE but I would like to
> get the system back in a working state again.

You can do both at the same time.

 
> Could you describe it how to remove iPXE and restore the original rom
> (without having saved it)?

Go get somewhere the content of the original ROM,
flash it to the place where it should be.
That restore is removal of iPXE ...

 
> Thanks!


Thank you for remembering us on all the research that is done.


Groeten
Geert Stappers
-- 
Leven en laten leven