Matt, have you seen the "Smoke and Mirrors" guides from Nomad?
http://www.mediasmartserver.net/2010/03 ... d-mirrors/
http://www.mediasmartserver.net/2011/04 ... rs-part-2/

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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?

Yessiree I did, these were some very nice write-ups. I think they covered much, if not all, of what needed to be done in extensive detail. Certainly a nice go-to guide for upgrading one's server(s)!

Unfortunately, the one thing the guide didn't really cover when it comes to the BIOS upgrades was whether or not the VOV debug cable was mandatory or optional. This is a critical item as to whether or not one can reasonably expect to proceed, or if they should bite the bullet and shell out for the cable. Personally, I would love to hop onto PayPal right now and cut a payment to VOV, but then I'd have to explain to the FFO--Family Financial Officer--my wife why I just blew $80.

Without going into gory detail, my wife was a victim of IT in the auto industry and was laid off last year. Instead of returning to IT, she went back to school for an aggressive training course to become a medical assistant...which translated into a year of us being a single-income household. With two young children, we had to be judicious. My wife is a natural saver, and I'm a natural spender.

So since I dropped $100 this week to get 2 x 4 GB, I've already got some explaining to do. So I really didn't want to have to buy that debug cable now if I didn't have to do it. Sure, it's on my radar, but once I make a few more eBay sales, coupled perhaps with some Home Server SMART donations (wink-wink ), then I'll go ahead and order it.

But I was eager to get my EX487 off of that horrible Celeron and onto a real processor. Having struck out with getting an E5300 working, I found a local computer shop with dual core Celerons (E3400) on sale for $30. Since this is a test box, I wasn't worried about having the beefiest processor and for most stuff the E3400 was reasonably "close enough" to the E5200. And so in it went.

I just didn't want to flash the EX487 bios to the EX495 BIOS hack, only to have an unusable server without the cable. I decided this evening, "what the hell," and gave 'er a go...and it worked!

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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

Ok, just wanted to make sure you'd seen those, I've not actually followed them as I tend to not upgrade my MSS's but they seem to be quite thorough guides.

I understand about the fun budget, it's tough especially with your wife laid off. Hopefully the HSS donations can help offset. And really glad to hear you got it working!

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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?

It sounds like this BIOS mod is a good one. Is there any others that need to be considered? This one sounds like it will do the job. Just asking, there is a lot of threads on multiple forums and it's hard to read them all.

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HP EX485, 4GB RAM, Intel Core2 Quad Processor Q9505S (6M Cache, 2.83 GHz, 1333 MHz FSB), 4 x 2TB WD Caviar Green

I don't know about other BIOS mods for the EX48x servers. I run this one in my EX487 and it does the job perfectly.

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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

In Afuwin's CMOS Options section, which option should I choose: Load ROM File's Optimal? (That option has SpeedStep enabled, btw.)

If you are doing this without the benefit of a debug cable, yes, you MUST pick either the Optimal or Fail Safe defaults. If you don't, the CMOS will clear and your Server will be unusable. You'll then have to get the debug cable to configure the BIOS.

I now have debug cables on my EX490 and EX487 as permanent fixtures. It is well worth having one in case you ever get stuck.

But yes, the Optimal defaults will be just fine. That's what I use.

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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

Thanks, msawyer91. I should clarify: I was mostly inquiring about the choice between "current optimal" (as stated in the howto) versus "ROM file optimal" (what I thought makes more sense). I chose ROM file optimal and am glad to find that I did not brick my server.

Ah, yes, you definitely made the right choice. "Current optimal" would have loaded the BIOS defaults relative to its pre-flash state, which would not line up correctly with the post-flash state, leaving you with an unusable server...and a definite need for the debug cable to fix it.

Glad to hear you're up and running.

_________________
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

Did anyone else notice their recovery partition is no longer there after the BIOS flash? I use to be able to choose either HDD 0 or the recovery flash drive from the BIOS boot order, but all I have now is HDD 0.

Mine is still there. I think it's USB flash 6.5 or something along those lines. I've found that if my EX487 graciously redoes the boot order if the server is ever rebooted with changes to USB devices (i.e. leaving a flash drive plugged in). That's annoying, but now that it's got WHS 2011 and a debug cable installed I really don't care if the built-in flash is available anymore. But as far as I can tell, it's still there.

_________________
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

I know its a old thread but Im just curious if anyone has gotten Xeon L3110 to work on a ex485? And one other thing, if running the hacked 495 bios on a 485 would any cpu that works on a 495 now work on a 485? Im assuming the micro code is still in tact on this hacked bios.

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EX485, 4gb ram
Intel® Pentium® Processor E5200 (2M Cache, 2.50 GHz, 800 MHz FSB)
4 1Tb drives
WHS 2011 64bit

Ditto on the "I know it is an old thread", but I'll leave an entry here ... and if I get a reply then great
Bought a CPU upgrade (EX7500) and 2GB memory about the time the original warranty ran out on my EX485 ... got busy, forgot about it, and only now just got around to performing the upgrades since I'm ebaying the server.
Used the procedure on this thread along with Alex Kuretz's article writen on March 12, 2010. Perfect instructions and successful execution. The EX485 is now running an Intel EX7500, 2GB memory, and HP Media 3.0 (from EX495 install disks). The system is stable and light years? faster, however fan speeds, voltages, and temps aren't reported correctly on the Settings>MediaSmart Server>Hardware tab. I'll attach a couple of screenshots in a minute to refer to, but I was wondering whether the incorrectly reported information source is PECI in Adaptation's 495 hacked bios, the fact that the board was designed for an AMD 440, or the HP MediaSmart Server 3.0 software not "looking" in the correct location to pull the information (or possibly a combination of all three sources)?

Now for the screenshots. I used RealTempGT 360 which utilizes Prime95 to stress the system through a "heat up" cycle, several intermediate clock throttling cycles, and finally a "cool down" cycle ... all the time monitoring both core temps of this processor and their delta from TJMax (100 degrees). While this was running I was also listening to both fans and also monitoring their "reported" speeds from the Home Server Console. Screenshot 1 is toward the end of the "heat up" cycle and screenshot 2 is toward the "cool down" cycle of the testing:




I'm satisfied everything is running normally and that with SpeedStep enabled the system is fine, but I just don't like the nagging "fans out of limits" and "voltages out of limits" health status. Yes I know I can ignore them and turn the server status back to "blue". So do I have to live with that or will it require a combination of further "hacking" the bios to report the information correctly? If not, then I'm assuming the fault lies with how the MediaSmart 3.0 software and three patches parse the information. Memory (no errors yet under normal system use) seems unaffected by the slightly higher speed of 266 vs 200 when SpeedStep is scaling the multiplier, so I lucked out with either quality memory or this is being reported incorrectly by RealTempGT 360 as well.

Thanks for any help or insight. Have a great week!

Doug

I use Speed fan to run the fans and have no messages about out of spec fan speeds. I run the fans at 75 to 100% depending on the ambient temperatures. I also run quad cores, so my fans are set high. The Ex485 for me was the easiest to set the fans since speedfan does such a nice job (I use speedfan 4.43 because I did have problems with 4.44). The Ex495's are a little touchy since speedfan doesn't work with them, you must go into the bios and fiddle with the settings.

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HP EX470, 4 GIG, 4200+ EE SFF, WHS V1, Production
HP EX485, 4 GIG, E5800, WHS 2011, Stablebit Drive Pool, Transfer Server, Backup Server
HP EX490, 4 GIG, Q9400S, WHS 2011, Stablebit Drive Pool, Mediaserver
HP EX485, 4 GIG, Q8200S, WHS 2011, ITUNES Server

i just flashed this bios to my ex485 and noticed that the hardware health page is no longer there, i wanted to see if i could speed up the fans since i my processor seems to heat up, was this just a bad flash and for some reason doesn't appear on mine or when the user edited the bios, removed that option?