Zitat von oh2ftu im Beitrag #162

---

I've backed up my SPI with a CH341A. I can program it in-situ back and forth, no issues.
The EMMC seems to be very unresponsive. Maybe it just failed at the same time that I updated. I've got two chips bought on ebay, but still no shipping indication.

I'm pondering IF I should try to read the EMMC in-place, but I would need to know the how the CPU is connected to it, 1,8V or 3,3V logic - to not burn it.
Also, I'm missing a suitable SD card reader so... yea...
I'm committed to revive this board, but at what cost? I did order replacement SPI-chips, just in case.. The flashes aren't cheap either. And the whole server is ~200e shipped to my doorstep.

I've even seen the amber flashing id light but.. didn't work either. Haven't been able to boot from SD for that matter.

---

Zitat von kur1j im Beitrag #163

---

What SPI chip do you have? Do you have a dump of it that you would be willing to share?

---

INFO: 00:003 SPI NOR init 4096 KiB AT25DF321A bus=0 cs=0, speed=1000000, mode=3
 

has anyone been able to write anything to the eMMC via the debug-pins? what tools were used?

Thanks for the tip about the uboot.bin file.

So how would you determine if the eMMC is actually bad or not? I thought the capacity: 0 seemed to indicate that it was bad but you said it was a red hearing. Unless I missed it in your posts I’m still not quite sure how to determine if I have a bad eMMC. Nothing I write to it works and I get the same response that someone else saw writing to the eMMC. When they replaced the eMMC it seemed to start working.

Granted at this point I’ve got to get my uboot chip working first...still waiting on my programmer from amazon.

Zitat von kur1j im Beitrag #169

---

Thanks for the tip about the uboot.bin file.

So how would you determine if the eMMC is actually bad or not? I thought the capacity: 0 seemed to indicate that it was bad but you said it was a red hearing. Unless I missed it in your posts I’m still not quite sure how to determine if I have a bad eMMC. Nothing I write to it works and I get the same response that someone else saw writing to the eMMC. When they replaced the eMMC it seemed to start working.

Granted at this point I’ve got to get my uboot chip working first...still waiting on my programmer from amazon.

---

So when I initially got my USB-UART working mine got to a linux shell as well, however I could not see any media devices with the df command. I also couldn’t run most of the normal linux commands you would expect. It just gave command not found. I forget exactly which but it was common stuff like cp/mkdir/du/vi

It seems that at least your system is seeing and the card. Mine just seemed completely broken and half there.

Most likely my eMMC is shot. I will verify this in a few weeks when I get my reader. I will also swap the eMMC when the new chip arrives.
Yesterday I received my set of SPI-flashes from RS. (MX25L3206EM2I-12G, RS: 914-0637). If you need one, I can send for a few euro/each including shipping (letter) to EU.

So I got my CH341A and can read and write to the 25Q03213 seemingly without a problem. I was able to make a backup of the current ROM and then was able to program the ROMs I found here in this thread (early on page 1 or 2). However, it does not get me back into any type of working state (I get no output on my UART-->USB console). I tried to extract the uBoot image from the firmimg.d7 but it said it was too large (was like 4,219KB, these images that were uploaded are all 4,096).

I'm wondering if my 25Q0313 isn't working because the ROMs were for other chips?

Edit: holy shit! I'm back in business! I tried this ROM from here (https://mega.nz/folder/Noh0CSII#YJp6qHlHyUPQ0r2Uw04vfA) in this post Dell R720xd iDRAC BIOS recovery and I'm now back into getting the "polling for SD card state change /" and if I short SW2 into the CLI where you can write stuff to memory and run the tftpboot commands! So I'm back to where I was, before I hosed this thing.

Aww crap. So the story is, I've got two R720's here. One has a working iDRAC but CPU1 socket is busted for memory channels 3 and 4.
Hence the second, which now has the busted iDRAC.
I looked into the FIRST one, and ordered two EMMC's as it has: KLM4G1EEHM-B101. These are BGA-169.
Would you like to venture a guess, if the one with busted iDRAC has the same eMMC? *bzzt*, no it does NOT!
It has a Hynix H26M31001FPR, which in turn is BGA-153. So now to order two of them also..

Zitat von oh2ftu im Beitrag #174

---

Aww crap. So the story is, I've got two R720's here. One has a working iDRAC but CPU1 socket is busted for memory channels 3 and 4.
Hence the second, which now has the busted iDRAC.
I looked into the FIRST one, and ordered two EMMC's as it has: KLM4G1EEHM-B101. These are BGA-169.
Would you like to venture a guess, if the one with busted iDRAC has the same eMMC? *bzzt*, no it does NOT!
It has a Hynix H26M31001FPR, which in turn is BGA-153. So now to order two of them also..

---

Replaced the emmc on one.
Lost the enterprise-license. Any idea where it might be located on the old flash?
Also, accidentally recovered directly to 2.75.75.... which is not really supported.
Any ideas how to downgrade to 2.65.65? rollback is not available. I'm not able to interrupt boot from console? or should I be able?

What eMMC chip did you use (model)?

I replaced it with a similar Hynix H26M31001FPR. These are available on eBay as xbox360 slim -replacements, Jotrin or directly from Hynix themselves.

Flashing the SPI with 1.57 (original) did not land me in a iDRAC-console. DAMN.
Seems like the only way to downgrade is to (somehow) wipe the EMMC, drop in the original 1.57 to the SPI and THEN recover to 2.65.

D'oh!

Also, if you are able to land in any way that makes it possible to dump the eMMC prior to swapping it, do so. You might be able to recover the XML for enterprise license. I will look into that one dump if it's present.

Good riddance.
Here's some 1-0-1 for anyone stumbling upon this.
The J_IDRAC_UART can be used for debugging with 3,3V TTL (Dell R720xd iDRAC BIOS recovery)
Check the debug-switches at Dell R720xd iDRAC BIOS recovery (7)

If possible, ALWAYS export your enterprise-license. It will vanish, when the eMMC is replaced.
Buy an SPI-programmer +clip and READ the SPI-chip. Use 3,3V levels! Make a backup of the binary. Using the CH341a MIGHT cause some problems, as some say it uses 5V for data. And the SPI is just 3,3V (vcc). Not to mention, what the CPU might be (1.8V?).

If you have an enterprise license, and were unable to export it; do the needful. Read the eMMC from the debug BEFORE you remove it.
You can do this with dd if you are sent to the linux-terminal.
(Dell R720xd iDRAC BIOS recovery (7)):
Here's the pinout for eMMC_dbg and connection to an SD-card reader (as seen on card, pins topside and to the right. 1 on top (chipped corner), 9 lowest):
- 1 GND
- 2 CLK -> 6
- 3 GND -> 7
- 4 D0 -> 8
- 5 D1 -> 9
- 6 D2 -> 1
- 7 D3 -> 2
- 8 GND
- 9 D4
- 10 D5
- 11 GND -> 4
- 12 D6
- 13 D7
- 14 VCC (3,3V!!) -> 5
- 15 CMD -> 3
- 16 GND
This will allow you to use a suitable SD/MMC card reader and linux to dump the complete card. Might, or might not work.

I used this method to completely erase the newly swapped EMMC that I accidentally flashed with 2.75.75;
- Using cfdisk in linux, I deleted all partitions, and then I ran (replace sdX with your card) 'dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdX bs=512k' to wipe it.
- Flashed an older, backup to the SPI.
- had an SD with firmimg.d7 from 2.65.65 waiting in the vflash-slot
Turned on power and voilá! it recovered completely.
note! you must nuke the eMMC with zeroes if you wish to recover it. Deleting the partition table is not enough.

Now I just need to find out how to get back those enterprice-licenses WITHOUT changing service tag (tried that, and it works)

Hope this helps someone.
All errors regarding emmc not being able to write or similar == faulty emmc and it needs to be replaced. What a pain to remove the motherboard PCB from the backplate.

Edit:
The license is located on partition 11, type ext3. Folder rsdsafe/lm.

Zitat von oh2ftu im Beitrag #179

---

Good riddance.
Here's some 1-0-1 for anyone stumbling upon this.
If possible, ALWAYS export your enterprise-license. It will vanish, when the eMMC is replaced.
Buy a CH341a+clip and READ the SPI-chip. Make a backup of the binary.
If you have an enterprise license, and were unable to export it; do the needful. Read the eMMC from the debug BEFORE you remove it. (courtesy of a forum member on the first pages):
Here's the pinout for eMMC_dbg and connection to an SD-card reader (as seen on card, pins topside and to the right. 1 on top (chipped corner), 9 lowest):
- 1 GND
- 2 CLK -> 6
- 3 GND -> 7
- 4 D0 -> 8
- 5 D1 -> 9
- 6 D2 -> 1
- 7 D3 -> 2
- 8 GND
- 9 D4
- 10 D5
- 11 GND -> 4
- 12 D6
- 13 D7
- 14 VCC (3,3V!!) -> 5
- 15 CMD -> 3
- 16 GND
This will allow you to use a suitable SD/MMC card reader and linux to dump the complete card. Might, or might not work.

I used this method to completely erase the newly swapped EMMC that I accidentally flashed with 2.75.75;
- Using cfdisk in linux, I deleted all partitions, and then I ran (replace sdX with your card) 'dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdX bs=512k' to wipe it.
- Flashed an older, backup to the SPI.
- had an SD with firmimg.d7 from 2.65.65 waiting in the vflash-slot
Turned on power and voilá! it recovered completely.
note! you must nuke the eMMC with zeroes if you wish to recover it. Deleting the partition table is not enough.

Now I just need to find out how to get back those enterprice-licenses WITHOUT changing service tag (tried that, and it works)

Hope this helps someone.
All errors regarding emmc not being able to write or similar == faulty emmc and it needs to be replaced. What a pain to remove the motherboard PCB from the backplate.

Edit:
The license is located on partition 11, type ext3. Folder rsdsafe/lm.

---