MicroServer motherboard with IBM M1015 LSI 9220-8I SAS controller



This card is cheap and can be found just about anywhere secondhand. The issue is that as a SAS RAID controller, the thing will not boot.

You need to reflash this card into what is called "IT mode" for which there are many instructions online, but nothing clear to explain when you need to include the ROM file.

Simply put, if all the drives in your system are connected to this card, you have to add the ROM to the flash process, or you will not be able to select any of the disks in the motherboard BIOS to boot from.

The reason for leaving the ROM out is to increase boot time, so if you have a SATA disc attached to boot from, you can leave the ROM out to increase boot times.

You will need a USB stick and FreeDOS and the easiest way is to just use Rufus because it includes downloading and using FreeDOS.




I found the best details on the card at ServeTheHome.com 

I used the files from Code From Above and I cannot guarantee any of these files and if they are clean, working and correct.

The process:
  1. Get the SAS address from the sticker physically from the card before installing. It should be something like 500605bXXXXXXXXX and may contain some spaces and dashes which should be ignored.
  2. Prepare a FreeDOS USB Stick using Rufus.
  3. Copy the M1015.zip content onto the USB stick.
  4. Boot from the USB stick on the server.
  5. Backup the current firmware
    1. megarec -readsbr 0 backup.sbr
  6. For the card into flash mode
    1. megarec.exe -writesbr 0 sbrempty.bin
  7. Clear the current firmware
    1. megarec.exe -cleanflash 0
  8. REBOOT
  9. Flash with ROM support:
    1. sas2flsh -o -f 2118it.bin -b mptsas2.rom
  10. Or flash without ROM support:
    1. sas2flsh -o -f 2118it.bin -b mptsas2.rom
  11. Register the SAS address you collected before installing the card
    1. sas2flsh -o -sasadd 500605bXXXXXXXXX
  12. Reboot
You should be done.

Please Note: Like anywhere on the Internet, when you download and flash firmwares, ROM's or anything else to your hardware, you are on your own and cannot blame me or anyone else if things go wrong. We share this information with you only because it worked for us, and we took the responsibilities and risks on ourselves when we did this. You have been warned!

Popular Posts