What i did step by step is :

1. power off the server
2. press the front panel button and keep it pressed
3. power on the server
4. wait until the health led starts to blink
5. release the front panel button

then you should be at the above mentioned screen.

P.S.: I've just attached a PS2 keyboard, and the only difference is that the
message about the missing keyboard is gone.

The health led blinking sequence if you press the front panel button one more time is(while in the BootBlock BIOS screen) :
two short blue blinks and then three long red blinks and after a slight pause the sequence is repeated.

More progress :

I've attached an USB floppy to the machine, and again did the trick
to get to the BootBlock BIOS screen, and this time I got :

"Detecting USB floppy drive media..."

It seems like if I have a diskette with the proper named bios image I
could reflash my BIOS.

ymboc, do you have backup image of the original BIOS?
Also mine is labeled "R02 Jul.13.2007" and I wonder if there are other revisions out there.

I was able to boot from DOS bootable diskette!

Cool!... I could give you my bios but it has my unit's serial number in it.... that and I don't think anything you did to your bios is responsible for your MSS' current state.


So it got further than the post screen and then it booted from the dos disk?.... or it booted off the floppy straight from the boot block bios?

So... All good now?

Ah, I see, so probably it won't help. I was thinking about giving the image to a friend with assembler knowledge, and probably finding the part that tests the usb flash on boot and NOP it.



Well not really, I booted off the floppy from the BootBlock BIOS.
It seems that the BootBlock BIOS is a limited functionality BIOS that gives you the possibility to boot from USB floppy for emergency reflash purposes. So far I was able to boot several DOS versions, and one linux floppy, but I haven't found a way to access the USB Flash yet.
If I could find a way to access the USB Flash from this floppy image, then I could just wipe it, and recreate the fat partition on it so the main BIOS can be happy.

P.S.: I have also tried to dump my BIOS image with varios versions of AWDFLASH.exe but none of them seemed to be happy with my BIOS chip.

I think you're close... try to find a linux boot disk that has USB support (or maybe a disk that will let you launch a bigger distro off of an attached USB cd-rom)... or alternatively look for a USB storage driver for DOS (they're out there. check out bootdisk.com or the like)


Check the X2 thread (page 4)... I linked to a version of awdflash that works with the MSS... either way you'll need either 8.8 or 8.9 (or newer)

Interesting thread.

I would be interested to see if the internal USB hidden disk can be accessed and modified.

I noticed in the Bois that the last option allows booting to a PXE server. I've had a bit of success using StorageSoft PXE Server to run on an XP machine. I want to be able to boot from an unmodified MSS and connect to a PC holding WHS images. StorageSoft holds all the boot images you supply it. So if I put a Ghost32 boot image and then a WHS backup image, I could restore remotely.

If the MSS internal USB software can be modified, that would be nice. Maybe I could run Ghost32 GhostCast server.

_________________
HP MediaSmart EX495 E8600 3.2Ghz CPU, 4GB ram, 8TB storage including 3TB drives in pool. WHS with Active Directory, WDS, Media Center Master, Logitech server. Office 2010 server with client add-ins.
Microsoft MVP - Windows Home Server.

I've tried already some of the USB under DOS methods mentioned on bootdisk.com, also I've tried linux 2.4 and 2.6 bootable floppies but none of them are able to recognize any of the hardware.
They complain a lot about wrong IRQs or that they are unable to get IRQ info from BIOS, etc...
Seems like the BootBlock BIOS is very limited.

Also I cannot seem to be able to use the awdflash program from the X2 thread, because it also complains that : System was not new AWARD BIOS version! Please updata ROM BIOS first ....

So, the recovery BIOS is not so limited, because I was able to boot not only USB floppies, but also from USB stick. The problem however is that not every boot loader works, probably because some of them rely on BIOS calls that are not implemented in the BootBlock BIOS.

It can... I've managed to back it up using acronis... replacing/modifying it is tricky however because as ndenev discovered, the bios actually checks what's on a disk before booting from it and with a few exceptions basically limits you to a FAT or NTFS file system.... and in ndenev's case the filesystem & partition table was so foreign to the bios that it choked on it and won't get past the drive detection screen on the MSS.

ndenev: Check out the coreboot project... supposedly they have it working for the churchill reference board (gigabyte)... if you're unable to make any further headway and if you do the building I may try out the bios for you and let you know if it works.

I'll definitely check it out, thanks.
I think I'll have go the BIOS socket way, like you did, because I'm not able to make a good backup of the BIOS with either awdflash nor uniflash, under the BootBlock BIOS and both programs say they don't recognise bios chip. But having the BIOS chip in a socket seems like a good idea anyways.

It can... I've managed to back it up using acronis... replacing/modifying it is tricky however because as ndenev discovered, the bios actually checks what's on a disk before booting from it and with a few exceptions basically limits you to a FAT or NTFS file system.... and in ndenev's case the filesystem & partition table was so foreign to the bios that it choked on it and won't get past the drive detection screen on the MSS.

I have acronis TrueImage Echo Image running on my MSS but I don't see how I can backup the flash, can you please explain, maybe a screen shot ? Thanks.

_________________
HP MediaSmart EX495 E8600 3.2Ghz CPU, 4GB ram, 8TB storage including 3TB drives in pool. WHS with Active Directory, WDS, Media Center Master, Logitech server. Office 2010 server with client add-ins.
Microsoft MVP - Windows Home Server.

ymboc, I have built one test image for the churchill board from the coreboot project.
This one contains only the coreinfo payload, so it won't be able too boot anything, but must show some hardware info. I'm not sure if it contains the VGA bios though, but you can test it if you want.

I hope to have my BIOS chip removed, backed up, and put back in a socket this week, so I can test more bravely

I tried (briefly) but couldn't find the churchill build instructions for coreboot can you link to them?... I'd like to review.

It's important to note that the MSS has a different SuperIO Chip (IT8705F) than gigabyte's churchill board (IT8716F) so it might require a deviation from the tutorial's instructions.