Re: Supermicro X9SCV-Q: no boot options to define

On Wed, 11 Dec 2019 08:23:59 +0100
"Hartmann, O." <ohartmann_at_walstatt.org> wrote:

> Hello folks,
> 
> my apology for polluting this list with a non-FreeBSD specific problem,
> but since Supermicro is a veryy often used vendor in the FreeBSD
> user/developer community I might find help here much fast.
> 
> I got hands on onto an oldish Supermicro X9SCV-Q mainboard, equipted
> with an older i5-25XXM CPU running at 2,5 GHz). The AMI BIOS has
> version 2.10.1208 from 2012.
> The board does initially a longer beep and the it sounds like two
> or three very short beeps plus a last longer beep at a higher tune and
> then the system ALWAYS jumps into the firmware/BIOS screen, no matter
> whether I set a administrator password to protect the BIOS or not.
> Apart from the suspect of damaged RAM (three beeps indicate RAM
> problem above the first 64k block, two indicate PEI recovery or video
> memory problems if I interpret the manual correctly).
> 
> Sometimes the POST screen shows some message like "... in Recovery
> State", due to the off-phased HDMI attached monitor, I do not see the
> first characters. Maybe someone knows what that might indicate.
> 
> I already have changed the memory banks and the memory seems to be
> allright as the replacement memory has been checked thoroughly prior to
> the test in another well running box and I also checked the memory on
> another box with memtest tool without any suspicious indication.
> 
> The attempt to flash the latest firmware fails due to the fact that I
> can not even define a boot device - either this process is cryptic or
> it isn't documented and I'm too dull. A FreeDOS 1.1 prepared USB
> flashdrive  isn't bootable as any other UEFI/non UEFI flashdrive: I can
> see the USB drive as being attached to PCI bus in the firmware menu, I
> also can define a symbolic name, but then I fail in defining the path
> to the loader as suggested in the example (fs0:\file\loader.efi or so).
> Any hint is welcome.
> 
> This board has been used successfully over the past years and was
> equipted with a TPM module at connector 23 (TMP1 header) - I'm
> unfamiliar with those technologies and my first guess apart from a
> hardware failure was that the hardware could have been protected anyway
> like it is done via secure boot. Unplugging that TPM header doesn'
> change anything.
> 
> Also the boot of XigmaNAS latest USB flashed image or any FreeBSD (11,
> 12 CURRENT) latest USB flashed image failed so far.
> 
> Thanks for some help in adavnce,
> 

Don't know whether this will help, but a user posted to a forum
that he had this mainboard and couldn't boot any USB device no
matter what the tried.

His final, working solution was:

<quote>
Further investigation found NOTHING would boot from USB.  I
cleared CMOS, entered setup and loaded Optimized Defaults,
rebooted, and VOILA!  Case closed.

*happy dance*
</quote>

BTW he was using VGA.

-- 
Gary Jennejohn