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Re: 3ware 9650SE-2LP RAID on DL320 G5 - incompatible

 
Paul Civati
Occasional Advisor

3ware 9650SE-2LP RAID on DL320 G5 - incompatible

I'm trying to use a 3ware 9650SE-2LP RAID card on a DL320 G5. (2-port SATA-II PCI-E).

The card was detected but when I went into the card BIOS it just froze at the next screen and wouldn't accept any keyboard input.

I have since updated the card firmware and now the card won't even load the BIOS at boot, and gives me an error "Operation memory allocation fail.3ware BIOS not installed" (see screen shot).

For testing I have installed on one disk attached to the onboard controller and installed the 3ware tools which find the card, I can query it, change settings, reconfigure the RAID. So this seems to be some incompatibility with the HP BIOS not being able to run the 3ware BIOS at boot.

Does anyone have any suggestions on how to get this resolved?
Is there an HP support procedure that will get this fixed?

So far 3ware support haven't been much help, probably because they don't have a DL320G5 chassis to test with.

I'm surprised about this incompatibility as 3ware are NOT cheap low end RAID cards.

Note that I have made sure the DL320G5 BIOS is up to date and I have also tried the card in both slot 1 and slot 2.
9 REPLIES 9
TY 007
Honored Contributor

Re: 3ware 9650SE-2LP RAID on DL320 G5 - incompatible

Hello Paul,

Closest Match:
"The firmware is incompatible with BIOS.3Ware BIOS not installed"

3ware Knowledge Base : SATA / PATA Products : Firmware:
http://www.3ware.com/kb/rssfeed.aspx?cNode=5T3M5P

Abstract:
The message 'This firmware is not compatible with this BIOS' can happen when the controller is not firmly seated in the slot.

With the system power off, remove the controller from the PCI slot, then reseat it and try booting again.

If this does not work try it again in a different PCI slot.

Make sure the controller is perpendicular to the slot.

If you are using a riser card, try plugging the controller directly into the slot.

If you still get the message, the 3ware controller card may defective. Please RMA it to 3ware.

See KB article 10746 http://www.3ware.com/kb/article.aspx?id=10746 for a description of the RMA process

Thanks
David Claypool
Honored Contributor

Re: 3ware 9650SE-2LP RAID on DL320 G5 - incompatible

It is up to 3ware to resolve this. ProLiant servers are far and away the standard for which everyone in the industry designs. 3ware may have a nice product, but it is unconscionable that they do not have the #1 server product in their shop to test and resolve their problems.
Paul Civati
Occasional Advisor

Re: 3ware 9650SE-2LP RAID on DL320 G5 - incompatible

3ware have come back to me with the following:

"The 9650se card will not post because HP bios only allocated 64k for PMM (post memory manager). We have reported the problem to HP but no fix so far. The problem can't be fixed by 3ware."
TY 007
Honored Contributor

Re: 3ware 9650SE-2LP RAID on DL320 G5 - incompatible

Hello Paul,

>> bios only allocated 64k for PMM (post memory manager)

Do check with 3ware, how much bios allocation is expected for this case?

Thanks
Paul Civati
Occasional Advisor

Re: 3ware 9650SE-2LP RAID on DL320 G5 - incompatible

I have asked 3ware, waiting to hear back, I think it can only be a marginal amount more.

In the mean time I have a support call open with HP but the 1st line tech is just going by the script of "we don't support 3rd party cards" even though I've supplied all the information here.

Quite frustrating as I'm sure this could be fixed with a BIOS update.
Paul Civati
Occasional Advisor

Re: 3ware 9650SE-2LP RAID on DL320 G5 - incompatible

3ware say they need at least 192K.
Paul Civati
Occasional Advisor

Re: 3ware 9650SE-2LP RAID on DL320 G5 - incompatible

HP support have come back to me and said the problem will not be fixed.

I have to say, for my first foray into brand hardware I'm not very impressed at all with HP.

If you're going to supply a server with standard expansion slots it would be useful if they were actually usable with 3rd party products.
David Claypool
Honored Contributor

Re: 3ware 9650SE-2LP RAID on DL320 G5 - incompatible

Paul, I'd turn your comment around and say, "For 3ware to design a product that doesn't work on 40% of the servers sold in the world..."

I'd also go a little further. Post Memory Management operates in the real mode of the processor and 64K is the maximum addressable contiguous address space. For 3ware to be using 192K in real mode, they must be doing some fancy (read: incompatible) footwork...
Eifel
New Member

Re: 3ware 9650SE-2LP RAID on DL320 G5 - incompatible

Hello!

 

I have HP ML350 G5 and I would like to have some SATA HDDs to be added so I bought 9550SX-16ML card.

Installed the card, connected HDD booted OS (Win7 pro) installed driver, card became recognized in device manager fine but no HDD present. OK, rebooted my PC and then during POST I saw this error "Operation memory allocation fail.3ware BIOS not installed" OK, I managed to update firmware for my 3ware card (created DOS bootable USB-drive, copied flash utility and firmware file) after successfull firware upade now during POST I can see that my 3ware card detects HDD that is connected to it. and offers to press alt+3 to enter utility, however If I press alt+3 - again the same sh* - bios cant be loaded because of insuffiscient memory - please upgrade your motherboard firmware (actually I did, I upgraded to 2015 or something but no results) or something and then 2ware bios is not loaded. Ehh. Is there anyway to fix this? I just wat to access my HDD from windows. I had an idea to try out windows based utility like "3ware Disk Management Tools " but I can't find any source to download from. Is there any workarround or solution? Probably I will throw out the 3ware card and will buy some other brand.