X11SSM-F New BIOS Posted

[B166ER]

I tried both of the bios reset solutions, nothing works and as such i can't access the bios (still revision 1.0a) to make changes. But you are right, maybe i should contact them or the seller. I just think that this is not a good board and i'm not sure if i still want to have it. The next isssue is right around the corner with that thing...

 

[B166ER]

Found the delivery note, board was delivered in march this year. Reseated the memory module, but to no effect. Disabled IPMI, no effect. This board is dead and that simply due to a change in the bios. I hope i get my money back, so i can buy another motherboard. Does someone have any suggestions? No Supermicro please. How is Tyan these days?

 

[joeschmuck]

AMD ;) ?

 

[B166ER]

Problem with AMD is ECC support. I want to be sure, that ECC is actually used. Ryzen is way to flakey and new (and no real ECC support), Threadripper is total overkill. I have a similar setup like Eric, with an i3-6100 instead. So Intel would be nice...

 

[B166ER]

Just talked with the seller and i get a new mobo soon (no money back). She said Supermicro won't be of any help since i am just a "little end-customer" and she is probably right. I mean, i can't even do anyting with the board so any service would be useless. But i am not looking forward getting the new board.

 

[joeschmuck]

I was of course joking about AMD. I'm glad you are able to get a new motherboard. My advice, if it works, don't upgrade the BIOS. Hopefully you will have version 2.0a installed.

 

[Stux]

Well, I hope your last one was just a lemon.

I've had good succes flashing bios and IPMI from FreeDOS USBs (after I fried the IPMI by being impatient during an http-based IPMI update)

 

[B166ER]

Sorry, just a little stressed to understand humor right now. :) ...board is back from the dead. I've removed the bios battery and waited for 10min.. Now i'am updating the bios to 2.0b. I used a FreeDos Usb. Seems to work. But don't ask me what the issue was. This ruined my entire day...

 

[B166ER]

Bios update to 2.0b was successfull. Hope it makes things more stable. 2.0b should also fix the Skylake/Kaby Lake HT issue, so a bios update to the latest version is strongly advised! Absolutely no clue why it was bitching though. At least i can use the new CPUs now. Thx again for the help!

 

[joeschmuck]

Glad you got through this ordeal. Hope the BIOS 2.0b works for a long long time.

 

[B166ER]

Thx, m8! I hope so too...
But a list of the actual changes in 2.0b would be nice. The microcode update should be part of that version. That was the reason why i disabled HT. There was an microcode update in R2.0a but i'm not sure if thats addressing the same issue. Maybe i'll contact Supermicro. How could i possibly know which bios version fixes what issue when they don't openly release a changelog? Totally stupid. I sure will post here if something behaves strangely with the new bios.

 

[B166ER]

Little addition:
I've tested the board with the new bios extensively with different OSs. The bios update definitely made things more stabil here. Before the update, the system behaved erratically, the USB wouldn't work, sponatenous Code 35's, changes in the bios would sometimes need several reboots etc.. That seems to be gone in the bazillion times i needed to reboot the system for testing, in order to understand how things behave. However, not all OS's seem to work as they should. Debian 9.1 froze after boot from an NVMe drive. Fedora 26 seems to work fine. But all Linux OS had problems with the i210AT out of the box, under FreeBSD it's fine. I had to toss an Intel Pro 1000 PT NIC into the machine, with that it's working flawlessly. All in all, i don't like the board very much. If things are running, i guess it's fine...IF. I guess i'll run Fedora 26 a while longer for further testing. I also want to test a Mellanox-3 Card with this board...

 

[Stux]

under FreeBSD it's fine.

To be fair, the forum hardware recommendation for this board is to run FreeNAS/FreeBSD ;)

 

[B166ER]

Yeah, but most of the issues with this board are OS independent and bios related. The bios still behaves funky considering the network stack. With only one ethernet cable plugged in, it refused to initialize the network stack- both cables had to be plugged in or the two ethernet devices won't show up at all. It's still like this board has it's own will...

 

[Ericloewe]

It's an AMI BIOS problem. Literally every single motherboard I've worked with in the past four years has suffered from crazy BIOS bugs.
On Asus, ASRock and Supermicro boards, the boot priorities code doesn't work half the time - ASRock even got rid of something as trivial as the boot override option, presumably because it doesn't work.
My ASRock X99 WS is literally incapable of booting any OS with the 3.x BIOS (still have to get back to the ASRock rep after I get the chance to try different RAM...).

And that's just the tip of the iceberg. We need an open-source BIOS option that gains traction with motherboard manufacturers so that AMI can die the corporate death it deserves.

 

[B166ER]

Wasn't aware it's so bad. Not that easy to steer clear of AMI Bioses. I'm wondering how that hardware could've passed testing anyway. It's not that it happens only with exotic hardware. Most reviews are not helpful in this regard...

 

[Ericloewe]

Most reviewers are probably used to it by now and don't even notice...

 

[B166ER]

Hard to believe anyone could ignore such blatant misbehaviour. And this is server grade hardware you pay a premium for, that something like this doesn't happen! Unfortunately, Tyan uses AMI Bios as well and the board layouts are awful imho. So no real alternative there....

 

[Zwck]

i was hoping to update my bios this weekend, but now i am scared shitless.....

 

[Ericloewe]

i was hoping to update my bios this weekend, but now i am scared crapless.....

It won't get any worse and at least you get some fixes.