SMBUS devices have a hard coded address, it sounds like the card responds to an address that conflicts with something on the mother board that is critical to the POST.

@knghtbrd

3 ай бұрын

Supposedly there _is_ an address resolution protocol. Supposedly. For two of the same device in the system, if nothing else.

@repatch43

3 ай бұрын

Came to say basically the same. The question of course is WHY would a PCIE device have an SM bus connection used? Poking around it looks like it has to do with setting up ACPI, so it's possible that by covering these pins some power management stuff won't work right, not sure

@EsaKarjalainen

3 ай бұрын

Wake-on-lan, maybe? @@repatch43

@nalinux

3 ай бұрын

It should be quite easy to check the address with an Arduino.

@repatch43

3 ай бұрын

@@nalinux And then? Some I2C devices are hard coded. With most they can be changed, but only by physically moving some jumpers that probably aren't populated. Tape is a straightforward solution

Tape is apparently a great fix. I have an 8TB backup hard drive in my main PC running 24/7 and it has pins taped to make it work. I pulled the internal HDD out of the WD usb enclosure, and they have proprietary info that goes out one of the unused 3.3v pins, and you have to tape it to get the drive to show up outside of its expected WD enclosure.

@stey2590

3 ай бұрын

Correct me if I'm wrong but I believe taping the 3.3v pin is only necessary if you're using an older power supply. I have a few shucked WD 14TB connected to a corsair RM850x and didn't need to tape the 3.3v.

@YaKillaCJ

3 ай бұрын

Yup. Taped over the pin on 3 diff shucked WD White drives. After limited warranty period, I just pulled em out.

@MasonzeroDigitalWorks

3 ай бұрын

Yeah that is the first thing I thought of, I have a couple shucked drives that needed this fix.

@Anaerin

3 ай бұрын

The SATA spec changed, so one of the 3.3v pins was unused and was switched to be a "reset" pin. If you don't tape it on drives that use the newer standard with an older PSU/connector, the 3.3v will hold the drive in reset rather than letting it power up.

@marcogenovesi8570

3 ай бұрын

it's not proprietary, it's a newer Sata spec that uses that pin for staggered spinup

Kapton tape would be my reccomendation for electrical isolation

@JeffGeerling

3 ай бұрын

Ditto; it will last a bit longer especially if you ever plug/unplug the card more than once or twice :)

@ROFLMAOwithExtraCheese

3 ай бұрын

Yeah it's great for things like this: - doesnt leave a goey residue like electrical tape. - resistant to high temperatures.

@pixel_vengeur391

3 ай бұрын

Side note, "Kapton" is a brand name, the more widespread name would be "polyamide" :D

@tarheels100

3 ай бұрын

​​@@pixel_vengeur391Just to one-up you on being nitpicky 😉, I'd say polyamide is the more general name, but Kapton is the more widespread name.

@Lurch-Bot

3 ай бұрын

It is pricey for a job where masking tape works. I bet you'd also tell me I was wrong for using 3M packing tape to tape mod my C2Q but it is still working, years later. Also, any kapton tape I've ever seen wouldn't stick half as well. Would probably just get bunched up during installation and not work anyway.

This is quite interesting. A friend of mine did something similar with a HDD enclosure. He took the drive out of the enclosure, covered some pins and he now has an expensive drive that he paid a fraction of the original price for because he bought it in an enclosure. Thank you!

@glenbush2008

3 ай бұрын

Yes , you remove the 3.3v pin, if the hdd sees 3.3v it won't spin up...

@marcogenovesi8570

3 ай бұрын

that pin in the drives is used for staggered spinup so for a server backplane to keep the drive powered off so it can power on the drives gradually and not all together to not overload the power supply

I ran into this with a RAID card one time. I guess ex-server hardware just needs this literal patch sometimes.

@HardwareHaven

3 ай бұрын

Haha "literal patch", that's great

@aneryan2875

3 ай бұрын

Real patch 😆😁

@fernandovalero8605

3 ай бұрын

Yes I applied the tape method to a old Dell H310 HBA a while ago.

@knghtbrd

3 ай бұрын

Do you still get SMART data from your drives if you do that? I imagine the HBA no longer reports temp of the card, but I guess that's okayish.

@doq

3 ай бұрын

@@knghtbrd SMART still worked fine for me.

I love that a commenter helped you, that's so cool! Good job, guys. This is very interesting, thanks for sharing! In simple terms, this means that taping these pins will interrupt communication between the bus and the network card.

I find it amazing that people figure this stuff out! - Such an AMAZING fix!!!

@HardwareHaven

3 ай бұрын

It shocks me. I wouldn't even know how to start troubleshooting something like that

Wow,what a fix.

If you're careful, you can just cut the tracks on the board. Did it on a Dell RAID controller to make it work on consumer boards. It still worked in the original server too. Edit: oh well you covered it anyway

I'm so happy you made a video on this, i spent so much time trying to figure it out, i hope your video helps people having this issue

Love those videos - soooo interesting and insightful. Has inspired me to tinker around at home! Thank you

I love nifty little fixes like this, it’s the kind of thing that once you have the tool in your toolbelt, you will never want to forget it.

oh.. nice transition when inserting the ram.. very nice!

Perfect timing for a video. This literally reencountered this issue 2 hours before you posted this. I have a OptiPlex 5060 and a Precision 3430 with the same CPU. The Mellanox connect3 cards I have work in the OptiPlex but not in the precision unless I take the ram stick out of dimm slot 1. I'm going to have to do the tape fix on it.

Ruth's footage does make up for the short video 🥰

@HardwareHaven

3 ай бұрын

Hahaha I’m glad

@TradieTrev

3 ай бұрын

This was way longer then it needed to be lol!

Tips and tricks, always appreciated.

neat. i'll be saving this for future troubleshooting.

This is a Dell thing. The KZread channel Art Of Server did a video on this, as well. That time it was HBA cards. Appears that Dell hard codes something on the SMBus which can cause issues like this when installed in a non-Dell server.

@someoneelse5005

3 ай бұрын

This is one of the reasons when I was getting a corporate machine to repurpose as a server I went with an HP, they are very good at supporting their bioses and don't have oddities like this, and those HP machines also typically have 80+ Platinum PSUs which is amazing for a home server. However, I have nothing good to say for their laptop, printer or pretty much any other division, it's just the fact that most of their corporate machines are really good.

@jonathanbuzzard1376

3 ай бұрын

It's more that the Dell desktop does not like server rated components. So if you take a Dell desktop and install an HBA including HP or generic ones then they either don't work or stop the machine posting. Cover the pins and magically they work or the machine boots.

@veehexx

3 ай бұрын

Incorrect being dell specific. I've MSI & 2x gigabyte consumer boards, 3x broadcom dual port NICs. Tape mod required for MSI and one of the gigabyte boards. the 2nd board worked fine.

It’s crazy how people figure this out but hey! Great PSA video and I love how you try to figure out what is going on. I will definitely keep this in my back pocket if I run into problematic server hardware myself!

Hi, my pleasure!! You really did the video....well done!!Looking forward for next videos!!

@HardwareHaven

3 ай бұрын

YAY glad you saw it! And yeah I did haha. This is proof that I do in fact take viewer suggestions seriously 😂 Thanks again!

@Mihai-Marian-Cenusa

3 ай бұрын

@@HardwareHaven I'm also passioned about computer hardware and operating systems. Maybe we should get in contact to discuss projects and ideas ;)

@HardwareHaven

3 ай бұрын

@@Mihai-Marian-Cenusa feel free to shoot me an email! That's usually what I check most often

This is a good shout....Have done similar with various dell perc cards for years to add them to none dell systems.

Covering pins tends to fix many an issue. Had the same issue with a Dell perc raid card some years ago

This actually corruputed the BIOS on one of my motherboards. Luckilly I had spare chips around, since the BIOS chip is in a socket. The tape did the trick and it's still working after about 5 years.

Oh the irony I just got one of these at work and was unaware that it would only work in my server. Had planned for it to go in a workstation I use for editing. Well now it can. Thanks to you .

I love this kind of fixes and I want more please.

Very cool. Kapton tape would probably be better for your long term pin covering needs.

@JamieStuff

3 ай бұрын

The socket would certainly appreciate the thinner tape.

I really LIKED that it was shorter. I don't always have the time to watch a long video, but watching a 5 minutes video at 2x speed means I can almost always sneak in the time. #fwiw

If there's an option in bios, you can disable smbus in bios too.

@Lurch-Bot

3 ай бұрын

Yeah, that's hit or miss. You don't always have that option. Considering this is an Optiplex, my gut says it isn't happening. I've had enough experience with several generations of them to say OP was out of his mind trying to use an Optiplex for that in the first place. They always have SMBus issues. I can't get more than 6GB of DDR3 to run on my C2Q Optiplex. It can't be a dead slot because it straight up refuses to post. If it was a dead slot, it probably wouldn't see it at all. I have verified by getting it to post with the RAM it does like in that slot. What it does is see a stick of RAM that doesn't comply with their narrow standard and just refuses to post. It does the same thing with this NIC. Pretty bad when you have to hard mod anything just to get it to work in a standardized slot. I tape modded my C2Q but that isn't the same thing.

kapton tape works well too! I have used it to make USB cables data only cables and other applications.

unironically many years ago I used to have a Dell PC with a core 2 duo, I wanted to overclock it but the bios didn't allow me, so I used duct tape of all things to cover a couple of specific pins and overclocked it from 2.6Ghz to 3.2Ghz. Edit: I didn't get to the part of the video at the time of this comment showing the tape CPU overclock, my b. still cool that it was possible.

This works because of a few reasons vendor lock is one. And data the other. You need to use thin tape or the slot will scrape off the tape when you put the card in. Also not goopy becuse you dont want glue on the contacts. You only usually need one pin covered and it will work.

another great use for painters tape. that stuff has literally hundreds of uses!

I'm an IT engineer and never heard of it. Thanks for the video!

This is fascinating as electronics engineer, will have to look into the smbus protocol. Seems like jtag/i2c compatible bus, i2c used for communication between nvme wifi cards and even between arduino & b&w oled display while jtag used to program fpga or arm chips. From the snippet it video, seems to be just for inputing data to the card, so even if standard might have something to do with feature set available only in server side hardware or just business use case like how ecc memory is/was.

@FowlerAskew

3 ай бұрын

I've worked with SMBus primarily for battery packs and it's basically I2C with some more strict timing specifications, ACK/NACK requirements, and address resolution. It's a pretty interesting protocol overall and an interesting approach to making I2C more robust

@arnabbiswasalsodeep

3 ай бұрын

@@FowlerAskew battery packs? Never would've thought of that of all things but I suppose it's critical info to prevent boom. Looks like eSPI & SMBus are intels updates to SPI & I2C. Idk if I3C owuld catch on but getting popular. SMBus for pcie seems to be for getting temp data for the card along with other things, so my initial assessment is probably correct that consumer chipsets just doesn't know what/hot to respond to the things the card asks for and is mapped to something else. Stopping it from communication just makes it behave like normal pcie card which is why I suppose it works

@pbe6965

2 ай бұрын

@@arnabbiswasalsodeep I've come accros this very recently, bought an SMBusUSB converter in an attempt to revive a dead battery, I'll have to talk to the chip to reset it. And I'll probably fix another battery in the process, which has bricked itself when the cells overdischarged, I charged them but once a fault is detected it'll never supply power again, and the computer is telling me I need to replace the battery ... even redirecting me to a shop where I buy a new one🤣 Some smart people reversed engineered the more recent chips used nowadays in a lot of batteries, specifications were never released for it (why allow people to fix their stuff themselves). I had some BMC modules I saved "just in case" or for future DIY projects but they won't work either since cells can't be replaced anymore due to these "safety features", once it detected a cell is removed it'll stop working (one is still trying to balance the cells I wired back, but doesn't get power on the connector). Old fashion ones weren't that picky, I replaced cells in the past with some success.

Knock me down with a feather!👍 Tape to cover pins for a bona fide fix? Golly, that is so amazing. Thank you.

Literally just had this issue with a used SFP+ card I purchased. Cant wait to try it my DELL...

I stumpled upon this myself with a Broadcom 4 port NIC. The interesting thing was that the last time I tested it in that system it was working. Eventually I found the same instructions and then I realized that I installed two more RAM sticks since the last time I used the card. So yeah, SMBus with RAM can be a problem with certain setups obviously. To be fair, that was server-grade hardware that I've been trying to use in a consumer system, so maybe the consumer-grade parts are to blame here.

You could use a logic analyser and tap the 4 pins (2 on the mobo, and 2 on the isolated NIC), to see which party does some talking. Somehow I would expect the NIC is just a slave, so that it would not spit out something on the SMB. Side note - the SPD info from memory should be a different bus. The most common use of SMB in computers is inventory listing, the second comes some out of band monitoring, and third is then use for controlling things.

Just used this on a Dell branded 4 port 1gbit nic in a Lenovo M92p. At first when it turned on it played a little musical tune (aka POST beep code).... remembered about watching this and applied some Kapton tape.

This reminds me of the fix when shucking drives and they were using the reset pins.

I'm using the one-port variant of that same NIC in my Windows machine. I didn't have this kind of trouble, instead the metal bar going across the card blocked my front panel USB header on my motherboard, but I got everything working with a right-angle adapter. This is good to know, though, if I decide to move it to a different machine for some reason.

I had a NIC that constantly threw "msi error"s and/or "msi interrupt"s. These caused a flood of logs to go to /var/log/syslog, at such a speed that my 512GB got full after about 10-15 minutes of working. I eliminated it by adding some options in grub. However, your case is something rare. Not booting at all is another story. Thanks for sharing, dude.

@Lurch-Bot

3 ай бұрын

OP got what he deserved by trying to throw a 10Gbps NIC in an old Optiplex. I could have predicted the outcome because I have had several of them. They always have SMBus issues. Keeps me from maxing out RAM on my old C2Q Optiplex. I would have to find a very specific 2GB DDR3 module to get it to 8GB. It really isn't worth the effort on a machine I use to play games from the late '90s and 2000s in Windows 7.

Short tip videos like this are perfectly acceptable!

Did something back in the day to convert an x86 Ati 9800 graphics card to mac compatibility (was a 32mb card and a G4 powermac). Nice video!

FWIW... even you're 600% sure you won't move the card elsewere or sell it... *don't scrape off contacts*! If you're lookint for a permanent yet reversable workaround, consider conformal coating. You can find cheap one that can be converted with ultraviolet light, but can be later scraped off without damaging the underling traces using solvent (buy the right one and please test it on a spare board before). It's fare easy to remove coating than create contacts again.

I just clip the pins off the card since I'm never, ever going to need the functionality they enable, and I kept finding that my tape would slip off. Had to do this with some dirt-cheap two-port 10G NICs I found on Amazon that were for sale from parted-out servers, and in my case they were HP, so definitely not just a Dell problem.

NGL, I'm pretty sure this would do NUMBERS as a YT short because of how quick it is to summarize and how generally unknown the info is.

I remembered there´s some laptops that would requiere that to upgrade the wifi cards (On some models doing the tape mod would fix the whitelist issue)

Great video

I have a Dell H310 card that needs some pcie pins taped in order to boot in non dell motherboards. i recently swapped it out for a LSI 9211i, just to try it out. both use the same chipset but the Dell one has a larger heatsink. im using a 80mm noctua fan right under it anyway for better thermals x)

Had the same thing on Dell and HP SAS cards. Did the same thing with painters tape.

@paulsnowdon4765

3 ай бұрын

Also that 10GB card you had looks to be an old fibre channel storage network card. So technically, it counts as a storage controller. I used to use those in an old role managing a SAN. I recently bought one for same idea as a 10gb network adapter.

Dell has a history of making strange compatibility issues on their workstation hardware to prevent people from experimenting or adding third party stuff to their machines. From non-stardard versions of standard connectors like fan and power supply ones to different BIOSes to lock compatibility of certain features.

3:20 I was about to comment that this reminds me of OC'ing LGA 775 CPUs on non-OC motherboards.

I ran into an issue like this last year with an LSI card when dropping it into an eMachines. Experimented with this a bit by covering the SM bus pins and then the issue went away. Might be more related to the older BIOS driven computers of that time period. Never quite figured out why this behavior is hit and miss but it's gone now.

I think the LED in the on off button flashes a pattern to indicate why its not posting. Similar to the old beep codes.

I always enjoy your videos, short and sweet or longer!........ I hope it was just the three cards that I bought 2 years ago, but the fans were anything but "nice" on these Dell X540-T2. SCREAMERS in my opinion. On two of them I just took off the fan, made sure they had airflow and no problem. The last one I stuck inside a Lenovo M720q tiny for a Pfsense box. Pfsense would lock up without the fan running. So if you are sticking this into something small and/or sensitive to sound, buy a version with a bigger heatsink. Just my $0.02.

I had to do this a while back with a dell perc card in a regular motherboard

Loved your work in The Walking Dead bro.

@HardwareHaven

3 ай бұрын

I’m curious… who are you comparing me to? Haha

Seen and done a similar thing with wifi cards on laptops when the laptop makers won't let you use a different wifi card.

Thanks for sharing. I actually bought 3 of these cards because they were so cheap. I didn't have that issue, but I had to replace them because I couldn't give up an 8x slot so ASUS and TPLINK cards is what I went with.

I fixed a printer from goodwill with the same kind of tape. There was a physically rotating part (I don't remember what it was called, an actuator? A piston?). After time, the foam spacer on it deteriorates and sticks so it no longer rotates properly. Putting tape over it makes it work again, so it doesn't stick. Tape is such a versatile fix for electronics! I spent $10 and got an awesome printer!

@pbe6965

2 ай бұрын

There's that old saying that You can fix everything with WD40 and Duct Tape : If it moves, but shouldn't move, use duct tape. If it doesn't move, but should move, use WD-40. But you've proven it's not always true, since the other way around worked best in your case😁

kapton tape is the best option vs painters tape for longer term use cases

Most server cards talk directly to memory controlers and because home board do not use ECC memory (well some do) this can be a problem on many boards

SMBus is related to I²C and has a similar enough protocol Linux uses the same driver code for both. I²C has a block of addresses that a device can live on, and the way it's supposed to work generally is each device gets its own address. If your first memory module uses address 50, the next one should be address 51, etc. How these things negotiate what address they live at if they can't have their "primary" for some reason or how they know that they can't have their primary is … there, but I don't know the details. But because SMBus is basically I²C except … I suspect there's a lot of barely-compliant/slightly-non-compliant devices mucking things up. I have a Gigabyte motherboard that Will Not recognize drives on my LSI SAS HBA. Nor will they work with my cheap little ASMedia HBA. The board boots, the card's BIOS loads, but no drives are seen. I suspect this might be the same SMBus issue. I don't think blocking SMBus is what I want in this case because I want monitoring to work. I'm switching motherboards to an ASRock board, hopefully that will solve the problem. If not, my old ASUS board worked, so it's a fair bet I could try one from ASUS, but I didn't see an ASUS B550 board with the right PCIE arrangement. Need two PCIe slots that aren't x1.

had something similar 7 years ago with the old style ac7260 pci wifi card.

You should definitely use Kapton tape instead of any other type of tape, they can leave residues and/or react with the traces. Some cards also don't work because of missing PRSNT link, fix is to wire A1 to B(last-1). I do this often to convert x16/x8 cards to x1 without any modification to the motherboard, for example to add an old video card to x1 slot and have the x16 slot available.

@Lurch-Bot

3 ай бұрын

Kapton tape is one of the weakest adhesive bonds you're gonna get. If anything is just going to bunch up and slip off when you insert the card, it will be Kapton tape. Even some high grade 3M packing tape is a better choice. It is what I used to tape mod my C2Q and it still holds up to what is pretty much a needle, constantly pressing on it. Let's see kapton tape do that. Kapton tape is designed for heat shielding ICs when doing SMT rework. It is barely even sticky. Also, those traces are gold plated so nothing is going to react with them :P

Years ago I had a 64mb ddr geforce AGP card that was incompatible with my motherboard. One sliver of tape on a pin and it then worked.

If you paint scale models, or wargaming miniatures you might be familiar with Tamiya tape. It' just paint masking tape, but you can buy it in super thin sizes, you can skip the exacto knife step

What network card is that? Looks like it can fit in a P330 tiny as well, the fan is a bonus.

I wonder if this would wok in my one system. The problem is any PCI-e Graphics card that needs supplemental 12v power in refuses to be detected. GTX 1050 ok GTX 1070 no go.

I loved your Crafty video on how to setup a minecraft server locally. Do you think it's financially worth it or should I just buy a server from a service online like Apex?

Flex Tape's eternal enemy....Blue Electrical Tape

@drinkoldcoke

3 ай бұрын

It's for painting, not electrical stuff. It's designed to come off easily.

I suspect this IS a DELL thing - I have an elderly friend who got ripped off buying an ancient Dell laptop from around 2012. It was a POS even when new, but 12 years later . . . but anyway my point is that while some components were upgradeable (HD for SSD and some extra RAM etc) when I tried to install a cheap secondhand wifi card in the available slot it refused to POST because DELL whitelists specific parts numbers on a per country basis, so if your part is not on the list it just won't boot. Thing is that specific part is actually listed in the DELL repair manual as 'compatible' - which it is in EVERY other regard than just not being on the BIOS whitelist which is totally inaccessible by design. No idea if this tape hack might have worked - I suspect not because it's looking for a positive confirmation.

Had to do the same thing to a Dell H310 raid car. If I'm not mistaken it's due to the address of the smbus

I have never had issues taping pins on both sides.

I have done similar with WiFi card in notebooks, which would be disabled by default and thus wheren't working notebooks with the matchin 'enable' key combination. Also I once had issues with some real crap notebooks (Dell), which blacklisted any internal hardware that wasn't originally supplied with the notebook. There you had to isolate the pins when powering up but after POST they needed to be reconnected again so the hardware would work with Windows, so I put in an arudino that did the (dis)connecting at the right time. Modern hardware is utter trash, because vendors actually are putting more energy into preventing owners from using their hardware than in innovating their products.

OMG that's amazing

Hey awesome video as always! QUick question: Do you think I could fix my HP NC522SFP Dualport 10GbE with this as well? As soon as I plug it in the server wont boot properly anymore. I am just a little afraid to brick something if I tape over the pins. Thanks for oyur advice!

@CrypticConsole

2 ай бұрын

Worst case scenario from this the server doesn't post and you remove the tape

Some Dell and HPE HBA card like this. i just cut the trace since I don't wan any stuff inside my PCIE slot. the HBA cost me nothing so cheaper way from my logic.

I can't believe it's not butter!

@HardwareHaven

3 ай бұрын

Haha you’re quick man

@MarcoGPUtuber

3 ай бұрын

Gotta hit that bell icon for Hardware Haven!

I have a dual port qnap switch that doesn't work in a computer I have and it won't post as well. Might try this

I'm thinking of getting a card like that (Intel X510/X520?) but am worried about it overheating due to reading reviews of it getting hot/overheating. I'll see if I can find one with a fan on it.

I also had to do this with an intel nic on an asus mobo

If it's the x540-t2 then you might want to enable CSM and disable PXE-boot. My card just straight locked the boot, I couldn't go past the first boot screen with UEFI logo.

Reminds me, I need a new cutting board.

@HardwareHaven

3 ай бұрын

Dead 2TB drives work great!

What's the 1/2 length card @ 0:17? I only know the red TP-Link cards that small...

i would go with kapton tape instead of painters tape! cool fix though

People are just likely to blame Dell because sometimes Dell is known for weird quirks. Even if it comes in a Dell it is probably a different brand like Mellanox in reality. Not all manufacturers can supply all of their own parts. Some may be able to produce most of their own parts but might get other things from other suppliers if they know some who make better quality than they normally would.

For me, I prefer using packing tape when I tape pins. It's thinner but doesn't come off as easily. Better for multiple inserts. And if one asks me how do I do this so much, it's because I used to and can still overclock Pentium II processors.

@CapriciousBibekk

3 ай бұрын

bsel mod used to be a thing. Good times.

diagnostic led code 2 flashes

i think HP raid card had similar fix due to issue when card was trying to contact ILO.

I'd use kapton instead of painters that can be a mess to remove from header if it happens to stick.

@HardwareHaven

3 ай бұрын

I need to get some!

RUTH IS ADORABLE!!

i have done the same, but wie a gpu form 16x to 8x because the maonbaord was broken and wont boot with 16x PCie devices only 8x and lower

That’s so close to what’s in the red neck tool kit. Duct tape and wd-40.

dubios yea

Esotheric Administration, it's one of the course for Cthulhu certif... oh wait...

This has been floating around for 10+ years on many raid controllers. I've done it on numerous cards, but nail polish works best.

I fixed my Vizio 55" TV by placing a 1mm sliver of cellophane tape over one connector to a single failed processor. No joke.

It (can) be that it is messing up the RAM