I was doing this just a two days ago, with a USB keyboard and the jumper in place. Make sure you've got it on the right jumper location (jp2 near the backplane socket) and press DEL repeatedly as the system starts to POST.

_________________
Alex Kuretz
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Thanks, but I have tried the above. I assume you have an EX485 or later? I believe any earlier models don't have to use a jumper, thus any jumper-problem would not affect connectivity with regards to BIOS-acccess.

I have every model of MediaSmart Server and wrote the guide on using the jumper to unlock the BIOS. The testing I mentioned in my previous post was on my EX495. I do use a different cable, so I've ordered one of these from Charles and will be doing more testing when it arrives.

_________________
Alex Kuretz
Remote Notification: Monitoring and alerting for your Home Server via email, Twitter, text message, RSS, push notifications, and on your Mac desktop
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Oops, that's the inattentive me... Sounds good, yakuza - looking forward to reading about your experience with this product.

Thanks!

First and foremost, I want to extend a big "thank you" to the pioneer customers who bought the Gen2 cable for their HP MediaSmart Server EX-49x computer but are having difficulties accessing the BIOS. It has come to my recent attention that the Gen2 PCB board is not 100% compatible with the HP EX-49x computer. The Gen2 adapter, to my knowledge, does indeed work, but you cannot access the BIOS. Customer's can still use the Gen2 adapter to troubleshoot boot-up problems (for example accidentally disabling the network card over Remote Desktop). More investigation is required on my part before I can fully support the EX-49x computer.

Edit: If anyone wants to get their hack on and help, simply join in this forum conversation.

Once again, thank you for all those involved to help diagnose the issue. I am here to help you guys out.

Edit: Some customers are coming forward saying that they can access the EX-49x BIOS using my cable. More investigation is required.

Hi Cakalapati,

I have an EX490 and I think a Gen 2 cable and I can get into the BIOS. I had to connect via KVM for it to work though.



I'm very happy with the cable - I'm using the serial connector to trace the LED's via kernel debugging at the moment.

Cheers,

-I.

Hi Cakalapati,

thank you very much.
I'm very happy with the cable.
Function at the Acer H340 of all OK!

Carsten

I received the cable about 10 days ago. Everything worked without any problems. It enabled me to figure out what was wrong with my home server. There was a S.M.A.R.T. drive error on boot up of my server and it was waiting for me to hit F1. Without the cable I would not have been able to see this. The cable saved me the unnecessay return (and shipping costs) of my home server back to Acer.

Thanks!

That error, requiring the use of F1, occurred during theboot process?

Could you attach a screenshot?

It would seem this may be something to report as a bug to MS...

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....JBick

EX475, 2 GB, LE-1640
PC1: Vista-->W7 Ultimate/32, (D-Drive RAID-5 Array)
PC2: Lenovo Laptop, Win XP Home SP3
2xLinksys WRT54G v1.1 and 2xNetGear GS105 Gbit switch

Unfortunately, I sent back the drive to Seagate for replacement. So I can't recreate the error to provide a screen shot. But this is what I remember:

The screen would appear after the bios routine and just before the Windows Server boot up screen.
From what I can recall the message similar to this:

S.M.A.R.T. failure predicted on hard drive: (Seagate Drive ID)
Warning: Immediately back up your data and replace hard disk drive. A failure may be imminent.
Press F1 to continue.

There is a lot of info about this error on the web . Which is fine if it occurs on a PC or laptop - just press F1 to continue - but when it occurs on a server without a monitor output, there is no way for a person to know what the problem is. And because this error held up the Windows boot process, I had assumed that it was a problem with the on-board NIC (no lights).

I don't think that it is a bug on Microsoft's part, but a problem with how Acer (can't speak for HP) handles this error. Since the H340 has no monitor output, there should be a timer or some other means to bypass this error without user intervention, and continue with the Windows boot process.

Once again, props to the GEN2 cable. It was a big help in troubleshooting my server problems.

Do you have to have a paypal account to buy one of the cables? I don't want to create an account with paypal.

You don't need a PayPal account, nor do you need to create one, to pay for the cable. Any major credit card will suffice. Thank you for the feedback. I've added this question to the "Frequently Asked Questions" section on the first page.

How do I go about ordering a Gen2 Cable?

Just contact cakalapati here on this site. He is the one selling the cables. I have 2 of them they work great. You should let him know which server model you intend on installing the cable. He will contact you very quickly and if he has them in stock he ships them out very fast.

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Exploring the possibilities!

Migrated from WHS2011 to WS2012E: HIGHLANDER

~ Norco 4220 Enclosure
~ Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD5
~ AMD Phenom II X4 995 3.2 GHz
~ 8 GB Corsair Vengeance DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800)
~ 3 Supermicro AOC-SASLP-MV8

The first post in this topic has the ordering details.

_________________
Alex Kuretz
Remote Notification: Monitoring and alerting for your Home Server via email, Twitter, text message, RSS, push notifications, and on your Mac desktop
Have you tried our Add-Ins? If so, be sure to Rate them at WeGotServed.