So I’ve been following along with the guide and watched the video about updating the mobo bios and flashing the LSI controller. Motherboard is Supermicro X9SCM-F, CPU is i3-2105, memory is Micron 2x4GB (one of the kits linked in build post), and LSI SAS9201-8i for getting more SATA connections.
I’ve built a few PCs so I went through the usual process (plug it all in and fire it up). Couldn’t get any video output at all. I was working backward to try to get it to POST and it did once I disconnected the expansion card. Went into BIOS, made the proper boot order, tried a Tails usb I had laying around and it appeared to be working. I made an unRAID usb and it didn’t boot.
At this point, I had to manually boot up UEFI (whatever the command line type interface it is) and use commands to boot the USB. Weird to me, but once it’s running I won’t have to do it much so I didn’t think anything of it. It worked, so I tried plugging the LSI controller back in and back to no boot.
Back to the BIOS, created a freeDOS USB, loaded up firmware updates for mobo and SAS9201 as per the video from the main post. No luck. Plug it into my main PC and boot from USB and it works. Back to the server and no combination of USB ports, VGA adapters, hardware unplugged, or BIOS settings are able to get anywhere after selecting from the boot menu.
I’m at a loss at this point. The fact that I was able to get unRAID to boot once makes me think it’s not a hardware compatibility issue, but rather something with software/settings. I’ve spent the majority of the weekend reading in unRAID, tech support, and server forums trying to find anything new to try but I’ve exhausted every search bar I could think of. Any help, tips, ideas, etc whatsoever would be a godsend