On Saturday I built my new system with an ASRock Taichi X399, 2990WC, and an LSI 9201-16i card. This was to replace my old xeon server and merge my gaming machine with it. Come to find out though the Taichi apparently has some major compatibility issue with the LSI 9201-16i HBA card. It took some work to get it to boot properly with it but after that I "lost" two disks then attempting to bring my array down the entire PCI card just simply disappeared. Rebooting displayed a few of the same errors I had to over come previously and finally getting back into the OS (Unraid) I simply mounted a drive. Drive came up and then immediately tons of errors logged into the sys log and 9201 card disappeared again. Took the card and stuck it into my old system booted 100% fine. Put it in my old ASRock with an i5-2500k booted and tested just fine. Put it in my gaming machine same. So I took out all my new hardware and stuck the old Xeon stuff back in and it rebuilt my array the rest of the weekend while having to recover 4 TB of data that was lost from backup. I put a ticket in with ASRock support and still haven't heard anything back.

My question is has anyone successfully ran an LSI 9201-16i card? If so how did you pull it off? My other question is if any of the MODs know any of the tech peoples at ASRock could you have them look into this issue? There are two other threads besides mine on reddit where they had the same issue but they simply ended up returning the board and buying a Zenith and I really don't want to as I really like ASRock boards. Any help is appreciated as well.

Also to the MODs sorry for creating an account and immediately posting.

Below is the two reddit threads I was talking about.

https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/92563l/boot_issue_with_lsi_920116i_hba/

https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/88yl4t/lsi_sas_920116e_and_x399_threadripper_issues/

https://forums.servethehome.com/index.php?threads/boot-issue-with-lsi-9201-16i.21255/ <- another two who sadly moved to another board because of this problem

i dont have scsi cards, so cant say for sure, but quick google told me that it has something to do with ACS

go to bios

under advanced -> amd CBS -> NBIO Common Options change ACS Enable to disabled

Sadly tried.. Setting bootrom to UEFI is what allowed it to eventually get to the OS. Also tried putting tape over certain pins as recommended in /r/datahoarder as they said sometimes a certain system on the cards that works with enterprise boards won't with consumer. Also didn't work though this is a "workstation" board so I'd expect more compatibility. Honestly never had any trouble out of this card till I got this board sadly. Thanks for the recommendation though.

I've put a ticket in but not got any response yet. On the firmware it has the last one that was released before it went EOL. Though it is EOL its what most datahoarders/storage people with home storage systems use because its super cheap,effective, and (usually) just works. Apparently it does "just work" on other boards sadly just not the taichi or the Fatal1ty. Really want to start using my 32 cores ;-; it was literally an amazing experience.

Honestly that's what annoys me. I want a down to earth board that wants to be 100% effective in cooling. The Taichi and Zenith at least make good strides compared to other boards but honestly they do need to bring back "real" workstation boards. Hopefully cut the price 10-15$ to because they don't have to load it full of crap.

server cpus usualy goes with lower clock stable 24/7 all year long

2990wx is more or less "overclock me to 500watts pretty please!" xD

there is epyc for workstations tbh

#_# yeah I plan on running this 2990wx all year long to. Not going to OC it but like the option(have plenty of cooling for it and a 1600watt titanium PSU). If I could just get the stupid HBA and board to play nicely. Its amazing actually because the Taichi is the most recommended board for doing gpu passthrough and a ton of assorted things because "asrock did everything right!" but sadly they did one thing wrong apparently ;-; . It's weird because this card honestly hasn't ever had problems in any board I've ever used. My old xeon server used to have a brother server with a similar card(same chipset) two less ports. Fails the same damn way. Yet works in all my other boards. I'm going to try other raid cards but honestly can't use a raid card with Unraid as unraid is expecting it to be direct access.

Problem I have there is A I'd have to sell this one since I can't return it and B no other board list my 64 GB of ram on their qvl. C I have 64 GB 16x4 that I am using since I was going to grow it to 128gb after ram came down in price but honestly kind of hosed it other boards don't list them as my ryzen build had a lot of trouble getting them to work at even close to rated speed (3200 mhz sticks b die only run at max 2800 on my prime pro x370). Really hope they honestly don't take long to update the bios. If they even see this I guess since it shouldn't be to hard to fix it other vendors easily do it..

Sell!

Odd. It's 'just' an HBA card.

OK, hmmmmm

Can you get a screenshot of the boot progress where the card is enumerated on screen?

Have you determined what BIOS and Firmware are installed on the 9201? BIOS'es usually aren't needing update. Firmware, absolutely.

New Taichi BIOS released yesterday, Aug 21. 3.30 - Beware and read the Caution concerning must be at 2.30 FIRST before flashing 3.30. Too, I'd highly suggest NOT having the 9201 installed when upflashing.

.

It originally had a bios and a firmware but many suggested on datahorder/server at home site to just do firmware so it's plug n play.

Firmware version is 20.00.07.00

Bios version WAS 7.39.02.00 <- you can not flash this and it will not load the boot rom to boot from the card.

I could reflash the bios to show a picture. Basically it goes to a page that says "initializing" with a spinning slash and just stops spinning and whole machine would freeze. I flashed the bios of the x399 taichi with just a GPU and ram installed.

Hmm, could it be CSM?

Can you try booting up with and without CSM?I don't know the X399 UEFI layout, though. You'll have to navigate to it yourself.

When I flashed just the firmware it bypasses all the bios optrom crap but it's basically masking the problem. Basically if you bypass the card from accessing the disks at boot and let it get to the OS. Once the OS accesses the disk and attempts to read/write anything the card goes offline.

That or "hopefully" they respond to my tech support request with a tweak on the bios. It has to be something kind of simple since other x399 boards do it properly and so does my two xeons, old i5, and ryzen 7 board. I'm guessing its something simple. Maybe even a simple bios setting but the problem is I've tried the ones that I know what they do. There are others that I don't but they don't have any actual documentation either for them. It literally just repeats what it says on the screen in the manual which isn't helpful at all.

Yeah that's one of the links in my first post. I'm fairly certain that one is one of the two from the reddit posts but I am unsure.

Well depends on what you want. I started with the FW/BootRom but some suggest simply leaving the BootRom off as it is only required if you wish to actually boot from a drive that resides on the card. I originally was trying to make it work like it has in every system I've ever owned with FW/Bootrom so after having it lock on me a few times I turned Bootrom to UEFI and it skipped it and booted the OS. I assumed it was just a minor hiccup with a UEFI bios and an older standard bootrom. But then the OS had issues as well so flashed just the FW and tried that way since some people have said on other boards for intel and xeons that fixed "oddness" and perhaps was "just a bad flash" though this card has been working just fine all these years. That still did not fix it in the OS. Just bypasses the card being accessed in the beginning and thus masked it.

I just wish I could get something out of their tech support. If they are open only "business days" then this would be the third day in a row with literally no response. It's a $300+ board so you would think it would get attention as there are probably many like me.