TL;DR:
Board generally working, BMC NVRAM dead.
Long Story:
I bought my C2550D4l in May 2014 and it has been working great to the day running on FreeNAS 9.2.1.9.
Since FreeNAS 11 is out for a few months now i was planning to upgrade and did some research.
Also i was planning to upgrade BIOS and BMC before that, esp. since i had discovered the watchdog bug.
So i did upgrade the BMC from 00.19.00 to 00.30.00 first, which apparently was too much for the NVRAM.
The upgrade itself worked it seems, the ipmi still boots up, like i can open an https/ssh Session BUT....
... there is no way to access it whatsoever, my Admin credentials nor Factory default credentials work.
I tried to reset it from within the Host OS itself - kldload ipmi does not even recognize an ipmi device,
neither does a FreeDOS USB Stick to run bmcdef or any other bmc related tool - the ipmi device is dead from a Hosts point of view.
After that i upgraded the BIOS to 2.90, which now reports the BMC Self test status as failed.
I have opened a case on Friday and awaiting their reply on Monday or Tuesday...
You are welcome.
Note that the NVRAM / Flash chip for this function is soldered to the system board. One of the pictures
I saw showed a gull wing 8 pin surface mount DIP. Not too hard to replace with the proper (de-)
soldering iron. But, nothing I would attempt today :-(.
This is kinda my only hope. I want to replace the NVRAM chip if possible.
On the bottom left corner of the board is a little chip, which seems to sit on a socket and a sticker "BMC 00.12.00" which was the stock BMC version.
According to the board Layout this should be the BMC ROM. Are you certain that the NVRAM Chip is somewhere else?
It would be easier to just replace a chip on a socket ofc, but i dont mind soldering if i have to.
So long story short, i'd appreciate any help in replacing the NVRAM.
Which means identifying the chip on the board and a Product code to get a spare part from... god knows where....
Tbh, i dont really have faith in ASRocks support, esp since im 3 months past my warranty.
So any help from you guys is appreciated,
thanks in advance ;)