Flash LSI 9210-8i Host Bus Adapter (HBA) with SAS2008 chipset to Initiator Target (IT) mode so that you can use SATA instead of SAS drives, on a Supermicro motherboard

flash-sas2008-README.md

• Format a USB drive as either FAT16 or FAT32

• Copy the files in these two zips onto it (unzip them first):

  • https://docs.broadcom.com/docs-and-downloads/host-bus-adapters/host-bus-adapters-common-files/sas_sata_6g_p20/9210-8i_Package_P20_IR_IT_FW_BIOS_for_MSDOS_Windows.zip
  • https://docs.broadcom.com/docs-and-downloads/host-bus-adapters/host-bus-adapters-common-files/sas_sata_6g_p20/Installer_P20_for_UEFI.zip

• Leave the USB plugged in (this is important), then reset your machine

• During boot, keep smashing F11 to get a boot selector menu. Once you have it, choose the Built in EFI shell as your boot enivironment

• Once that boots up, it will list the block devices (hard drives) attached to your machine, but it should also pick up a filesystem on your USB drive. It can only do this on boot, which is why its important to make sure the USB is plugged in at boot time.

• Type fs0:\ to mount the USB filesystem (or fs<x>:\ if the filesystem has a different name

• Now run Installer_P20_for_UEFI\sas2flash_efi_ebc_rel\sas2flash.efi -list to get some details about your card. Take a photo of this just in case.

This is the prep work. Now what you want to do is 2 things:

• Update the BIOS to a more recent version
  • The file you want for this is call MPTSAS2.ROM
• Install Initator Target firmware.
  • The file you want for this is called 2108IT.BIN

Erase the existing flash:

sas2flash.efi -o -e 6

You'll see some message like 'Erasing Flash Region'. In my case it hung here for maybe 15 seconds, then I got 'Erase Flash Operation Successful!'

Then, try:

sas2flash.efi -o -f 2108it.bin -b mptsas2.rom

You should see some junk like "Beginning Firmware Download" which is poorly termed imo, as I think this is just the firmware being flashed.

Then, you should see another message like "Attempting to Flash Bios Image...". After a few seconds it will say "Flash BIOS image successful" and you should be good.

Now run a sas2flash -list to see:

• an updated BIOS (mine was 7.20.00.00, now is 7.39.02.00)
• A firmware product ID with IT as a suffix - this means you can use SATA drives with the adapter.

With thanks to ArsTech and boris_d on the TrueNAS forums.