Yeah, I'm pretty sure the BIOS flash is just fine. The only thing I was messing with was the onboard 256MB USB-attached flash.

For whatever reason the mini-Linux I put on the USB flash causes the BIOS to hang during the part (I think) where it's detecting the drives. It seems to be ignoring DEL as well as CTRL-ALT-DEL.

I backed up the flash using dd. The flash drive came up as just another SCSI device, formatted as NTFS.

Just a feeling: It's probably hanging just past the post screen... after drive detection.... that's where it hung for me when I was trying different things (raid vs ahci vs ide emu sata)

I've been fiddling with usb thumb drives and the system refuses to boot off of them if they're formated in anything but FAT...

I have a freenas (UFS) stick that boots fine on another system but doesn't even show up on the F12 Boot Menu.... if I reformat the stick with fat or fat32 and load msdos onto it, it shows up in the boot menu and boots just fine.

Seems silly that the bios would check for a fat partition but there you have it.

Is your machined bricked atm? Hopefully you still have a WHS system drive handy because you could restore the flash image with a win32 port of dd... alternatively the system will boot all manner of OS' live-cds from a usb-cdrom plugged into the bottom usb port.

Additional Info: I was able to boot of a flash disk that was formatted with NTFS. I got the impression that the system actually booted (i.e. loaded a boot sector) from the internal flash drive, then switched to my USB thumb drive. This would be congruent with some issues I had with installing Windows 2008.

If the boot sequence starts on the internal flash disk, and that code only recognized FAT/FAT32/NTFS (say some NT-Boot loader type thing), then it would also explain your observations....

Has anyone managed to overwrite the internal flash disk with a booting OS?

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MSS: HP EX470 w/ Athlon X2 BE-2300, 1.9 GHz (using ymboc's BIOS mod), 4GB RAM & 3x 500GB.

It would explain some of the phenomena but I'd be surprised if that's actually what's going on. It's just that the F12 boot menu is definitely bios based... and I've booted off of just about everything with it... even PXE

To debunk/confirm you could disable USB support in the bios (since onboard flash is on the usb bus)...

Followup: I was able to backup the onboard flash today using an acronis boot cd... Oddly enough the onboard flash would only appear in acronis' drive list if I removed the drive from bay#1...

Thanks for all the suggestions. It is unfortunately still bricked.

I tried a FAT32 thumbdrive in the bottom USB port to no avail; the BIOS still just sat there looking for disks and ignoring the keyboard. Plugging in the original WHS drive also did not work. I also tried messing with the jumper on the motherboard and pulling the NVRAM battery, neither of which appeared to do anything.

You don't have video do you? If so, have a picture of where it's stalled?

Is it possible that one of your drives has died or the connection to it is bad?... or possibly the back-plane needs to be re-seated? (if you've had it apart) Maybe its hanging the drive detection?

Yeah, I have a video cable. I'll see if I can get a pic up tonight.

Even without any drives it still stalled. Pulling the backplane might be worth a shot though. Thanks!

If you've got a good kernel config that is working (except net) can you please post it here?

I've attached my first attempt at a gentoo-sources 2.16.26-r1 config. But this config seems to have a couple of issues.

* Only 2 drives are detected out of 4
* DHCP not working on the internal nic, even with the { "HP EX470 PHY", { 0x004d, 0xd010 }, LAN, 0 }, patch.

The gentoo live CD properly detects all 4 drives but after I reboot into my install fdisk -l only shows 2 drives, which are the 1st and 3rd bays.

Anyone have any ideas what is going on with my kernel config only recognizing 2 bays? I've since switched the EX470 to Ubuntu Server 8.04 but I'd like to know what was happening.

I am also having weird DHCP issues. Unfortunately, I haven't spent the time needed to successfully diagnose the problem (nor do I see myself doing this in the near future). My Linux work is strictly experimental so no quad drive usage for me.

* Debian Etch (32 bit)
* Vanilla 2.6.25 kernel
* { "HP EX470 PHY", { 0x004d, 0xd010 }, LAN, 0 } nic patch
* network sporadically works

Sorry for the epic delay. Life and all that

Anyway, the pics are attached. Pounding the DEL key changes the behavior slightly to the second image.

genpfault: Take a look at the I have bricked my MSS... thread in the Hardware Forum.... ndenev is (unfortunately) suffering from the same problem...

Are you able to get into the BIOS? Perhaps you can change the boot priority settings?

Is anyone able to have their MSS Linux box work for more than 5-10 minutes? My MSS Debian box seems to freeze up sporadically necessitating a complete power-down. Once again, it happens sporadically. Is there some kind of watchdog AVR at play?

Is anyone able to have their MSS Linux box up for more than 10 minutes?

Mine worked fine before I diddled the onboard flash. Debian Lenny amd64, kernel circa 4-5 months ago.