You are correct -- you can plug in a USB keyboard and mouse, so a video board is all you'd need.

I've never used a Windows password reset disk, so I can't give any guidance there. I think for that to work, the password reset disk had to be created from that very installation of Windows. I don't think you can use just any old password reset disk.

To boot from USB, you don't necessarily need to change the BIOS. Just plug the USB drive into the BOTTOM port on the back. Yes, it needs to be in the bottom one. Plug your keyboard and mouse into any of the other USB ports, including the one on the front. Power on the server, and when the BIOS screen appears, press F12 until it acknowledges it'll bring up the boot selection screen. Once that appears, select your thumb drive and it should boot from that.

Be warned I'm speaking from experience using an EX487 and EX490/495. The 47x use AMD chipsets whereas the 48x and 49x are Intel, so there may be differences in the BIOS and which keys to press (e.g. ESC vs. DEL vs. F2).

_________________
Matt Sawyer
Owner, Dojo North Software, LLC

HP EX490, 4GB, E5300, 15TB - Server 2012 - Sharing and Streaming
HP EX487, 4GB, E5300, 13TB - Server 2012 Essentials - Backups

Hi everyone this is my first time here!
Last week I ordered a debug board from Charles and here is how it went for me:

I got a nice email from Charles telling me that my board had shipped and the tracking number.
I got it Saturday just like clockwork four days after I ordered it!
I already had my HP MSS machine apart as I had to replace the power supply and was waiting to see if I could get the machine up and running again before I did anything else to it.
It fit perfect under the MB but with a lot of extra connectors and I had to re pin it to match the HP power configuration!
(after everything worked I cut off the ones I didn't need)

I had to wait until Monday to install it and see if thing were going to work. I installed the berg jumper on the pins marked 'J'.
I got the cable plugged in and set the MB and PWR SUP on a table plugged in the Drive backplane and the front panel with the lights on it.
Next was connecting a keyboard, mouse and monitor to the cable box.
Next I carefully inserted my original HD in and propped it up with a plastic pen above the heat sink.
After plugging in the network cable and power cord I was ready to see what it would do.
I hit the power button and things started happening. I watched the machine start and then started booting off the embedded USB bootflash that contains the Server Recovery boot image.
After trying it several times and getting errors saying something like the drives were not in the right order (only one hard drive installed) it quit doing anything. I tried that several times without success so moved on.

I had another drive with Linux Ubuntu 14.04 Server already installed on it. So I removed the Windows drive and installed it. When I booted I was able to get to the BIOS.
After turning off the boot using the embedded bootflash I was able to get the Ubuntu drive to boot up and start working.
I have it up and running on my home network.
The thing that I notice now is that the health blue light is blinking and of course the drive lights are not working at all.
Is there a setting somewhere to make the health light stop flashing and can the drive lights be turned on in a Linux operating system?
(Charles replied to my email telling him I had received the board and pointed me to a link on this forum on the LED's)
Now that I have the good looking and great working board I can see what is going on!
I plan install the board permanently next time I have the machine apart.

Thanks Charles for a great product and advice!

You lost me with:

I have never seen a need for that for the debug board.
Or are you talking about the psu for certain?
If so I would double check the psu pins.
And probably call the psu vendor.
Also if you installed linux then I don't think there are drivers to support the leds at all.

_________________
EX-490
WHS v1
VGA/PS2 Keyboard/PS2 Mouse/Serial debug board
Q9450s CPU
Stock Ram
ESATA Sansdigital Towerraid TR5M-B
Popcorn C-200
Popcorn A-200
Dune HD Connect
Rasberry PI OSMC(KODI)
ReadyNAS RN316
Amazon FireStick
Amazon ECHO
AnyDvD
MyMovies

Troubleshooting: no video. Cause: cable connector mis-oriented, user error.

I received my Gen4 cable, followed the disassembly instructions at http://www.mediasmartserver.net/2009/09/16/a-closer-look-at-the-ex490-and-ex495-hardware/, installed the cable connector, reassembled, started my EX485 - no video. Since everyone else reported zero trouble with this cable, I assumed user error - and I was right.

I disassembled again, removed the cable connector and gave it a careful inspection. D'oh! Vertical tabs on one side of the white cable connector, which I hadn't noticed initially, so I'd inserted the connector backward.

I re-oriented the white cable connector so the vertical tabs aligned with the slots, reassembled - video!

Two takeaways:
* pay close attention to lining up the white cable connector's vertical tabs with the corresponding slots during installation
* if you get no video, check the cable connector orientation

--Peter

Never mind. Problem solved

Thanks for continuing this service Charles.

A Great contribution to a great platform that has plenty of life still in it.

I actually run Xpenology, but would like to solve some boot issues after loosing power.

I have 2 EX495s, 1 ex490 with an e6700 cpu upgrade, and a ex470, that sounds like an airplane but cannot seem to get the chipset driver from crashing xpenology, so i may move that over to ubuntu or something.

Anyways, will get plenty of use out of the debug board for my 4 MS servers from HP.

nc88keyz.

_________________
(1) HP EX470 3800+, 2GB/Status=Asleep
(2) HP EX495 "Stock" Xpenology XPEnoboot_DS3615xs_5.1-5022.4.img
Anyone get "mediasmartserverd" led control daemon working on xpenology and your MSS please msg me!!!

I have had an EX487 for many years, and am now interested in upgrading it to Windows 2012 Essentials. Any chance you have a KVM cable laying around, that I could purchase? Any generation that works is fine. Thanks. Enjoy the Holiday weekend.

Hi everyone. I thought I would drop a quick update. I've been sold out of debug adapters for a few weeks because it's gotten a lot harder to make the cables at the same price. I've gotten some tremendous feedback to keep the service going because it's the only debug adapter that comes remotely close to the actual debug adapter that HP uses. I refuse to sacrifice on quality.

Cables are back in stock. This will probably be the last batch before shutting down the service for good. Please keep the good feedback coming and thank you for your support.

excellent service, looking forward to recovering my 485 n i have a 510 that i would like to install WHS 2011 on. thank you for the service ~

Hey there! I was in the process of ordering the $95 set, however on submission PayPal let me know that it is no longer available. I understand you are on break (happy new year!), wondering if the sets will be back on sale anytime soon? Looking forward to mess with the bios a bit in order to boot from a USB via nas4free on my x310, but I do completely understand if these are no longer being made.

Thank you for the great service you've provided over the past couple years!

I worry they may have sold out while Charles was on break but the automation of the ordering continued to function, Or maybe there is some sort of glitch. I placed an order at the end of December knowing it's worth the wait to get one of these boards. Like you I ordered the $95 board which was the only one NOT listed as sold out and had the functional add to cart link. That link is still functional today. My order went through and I received a ship notice from paypal on 1/3 with tracking as well as a thank you and instruction email also stating it shipped. Tracking reports the shipping label was created but as of today it is still waiting to receive the item. Hope there are some left to ship or if the order automation got ahead of supply maybe a mini order can be produced to cover excess sales? Page still says Charles is on break though so maybe this is what is supposed to happen until he gets back and fills the orders.

As I think about these going our of production I think I probably should have ordered 2. Re-purposing these great servers to run a newer OS is a no brainer.

Yes, a few customers had issues with USPS losing packages during the holiday rush. Those issues have long been resolved and every customer should be happy with a cable in hand.

I run a pretty tight ship and I'm also very proud that every single customer is satisfied. But if you're not, please send me an email and I'll make it right.

I'm getting ready a huge batch. It's currently going through testing. If you've emailed me, you're already on the notification list. Sorry, I cannot respond to each and every email but rest assured, you have a cable with your name on it. I should be alerting you soon (about 1 week).

I should have posted a followup that I received my board some time ago. Charles shipped me another after the first one never moved in USPS tracking. I love these boards.

Received my board today at 08:00 and was looking at my bios at 08:30. Fitted the Board at the back as seen in this thread and now running WHS on one drive and Ubuntu server on another drive. Might try Windows server 2016 on another drive just for the fun of it.

This Board is an excellent product, extremely well made and packaged.

Thanks

Ralph

Can anyone who's used this board in an LX195 reply with instructions before I order one? Would the 26-terminal cable connect to the motherboard (top left) somewhere?