[ILUG] [OT] Xeon cpu microcode updates?

[Declan Moriarty]

On Tue, 2006-06-06 at 09:34 +0100, Patrick Tuite wrote:

> > I'm not keen on flashing the BIOS, because it is a new motherboard,
> > which I presume has a new BIOS anyhow. I'll examine the older m/b to see
> > what the story is with the BIOS there.
> >
> > I think I'll let the customer ask Dell, and see what he comes up with.
> > He'll hardly be game to have me travel again to kill a warning message.
> > And I'll be very much 'out of the office' taking it on. I have a
> > microcode update, and an eprom programmer, so things become possible
> > like searching the hex in the bios for a string in the mocrocode.
> >
> > Thanks to all who filled me in on this - it seems to bellyache near the
> > beginning of the boot, but boots are few :-).

> Hi Declan
> 
> Had that problem myself after changing a motherbard. This was a set of dual 
> PIII's on a Tyan M/B. The only replacement board I could get with the right 
> sockets was an Intel Server board. This message for the microcode came up 
> during BIOS, you could press a key to continue and could then boot into 
> Windows. It was, however,  reporting the speed of the processors wrongly so I 
> decided to upgrade the BIOS. After that it would not boot with those 
> processors. Turns out the board would only work with processors of a certain 
> speed (these were 1Ghz and therefore too low) and upgrading the BIOS made it 
> absolutely sure which ones it would work with.
> However sounds to me like you got your M/B swapped out under a Dell H/W 
> contract, if so then that shouldn't be the same situation.

No h/w contract, this was bought by credit card from specs off the top
of my head on a drive homne from rural parts. But it looked the same, It
stood up and didn't complain, and 2.4Ghz Xeons are not 100% out of date.
I expect the FSB may have increased. The original had a 533 Mhz bus
speed, this replacement may be faster. But there was no book, no cd, no
nothing with the replacement. "533" Mhz was actually 166mhz on a 32 bit
machine. Presuming the same nuttiness applies to a 64 bit, and noting
that the ram is capable of 266 Mhz, that would take you up towards
(guessing) "~800 Mhz" FSB in intelspeak. 

This new m/b reports the processor speeds correctly. I am going to stay
quiet on this, and hope it goes away. It's business: Everyone here is
trying to help me out, but the customer isn't going to pay, the company
running warranty certainly isn't, and nobody would tolerate a risk of
downtime. Getting me to do anything would be expensive because of
distance, and getting their local IT guy involved would be brave if the
task was not clear.

Trying to remember this, it's around the 'ntldr' stage of the boot
process when I get this message. It's found the disks, settled on the
boot order, but not loaded much beyond that. If they close for a holiday
period, I could try something - that's in August.

-- 
        With Best Regards,

        Declan Moriarty.