Microsemi RAID compatibility issue?

Optimoos · May 11, 2018

I've got a system I use as a server which has an Adaptec 5805 in it. The 5805 is a bit ancient and not officially supported under Windows 10 which is what I'm using as the OS, and I've been experiencing device failures under heavy I/O - the drives presented by the 5805 just stop being accessible although the device doesn't complain in the event log or anything like that.

In hopes of resolving this, I thought I'd modernize the card with the suggested replacement, a Microsemi (Adaptec) 3152-8i. However, I ran into a completely different problem when trying to install the new card - my system will no longer post. The motherboard is a GA-Z77X-UD3H with an i5-2500 on BIOS F20e. This is a beta BIOS but is also the only one that deals with booting off the on-board controller properly while any additional storage controllers are connected. The error code off the board indicates the system is halting during memory initialization at which point it power cycles, swaps the active BIOS, tries again, fails, and repeats. I'm typically seeing code 08 or 15 when this happens. I tried pulling memory and swapping combinations in all flavours of single and dual channel but the result is the same every time - the system boots fine without the card, gets nowhere with it.

I'm open to the possibility of this truly being a memory/motherboard problem, but it's a very strange manifestation as the system is rock solid otherwise (apart from the aforementioned occasional storage failure under load, which doesn't smell like a memory problem). I asked Microsemi as their compatibility charts (while incomplete in the consumer board space) only mention the Z87 chipset as supported, not the Z77. As expected, their response was essentially that it should be fine but no guarantees, so not particularly helpful.

Anyone have any thoughts? Any other information I can provide?

H4nn3s · May 12, 2018

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e0nJV0jelkg&t=1s

It's a long shot but this might fix your problem. Unfortunately some enterprise hardware has compatibility issues with consumer hardware.

Optimoos · May 12, 2018

Huh, that's super random but also precisely what was going on for me. Unfortunately it seems like I've fixed one problem and moved on to the next - now the system will post and boot fine, but during adapter initialization the card spits out "Microsemi BIOS is unable to continue due to insufficient EBDA memory space". Once in the OS it appears fine and even sees the drives attached, but it's not detecting the previous logical configuration which it should. I'll spend some more time troubleshooting this later, just wanted to say thanks for getting me over the first hurdle.

H4nn3s · May 12, 2018

1 hour ago, Optimoos said:

Huh, that's super random but also precisely what was going on for me. Unfortunately it seems like I've fixed one problem and moved on to the next - now the system will post and boot fine, but during adapter initialization the card spits out "Microsemi BIOS is unable to continue due to insufficient EBDA memory space". Once in the OS it appears fine and even sees the drives attached, but it's not detecting the previous logical configuration which it should. I'll spend some more time troubleshooting this later, just wanted to say thanks for getting me over the first hurdle.

Glad I was able to help. Since I never had to deal with that error before, I don't really know how to help you, but you could try to reflash the cards bios.