====== LSI HBA Flashing ======

===== Firmware Types =====

  * HBA Firmware - what the HBA processor runs
    * **IT**: Target mode - devices are in passthrough, with redundancy/volume management and computation in software e.g. ZFS
    * **IR**: RAID mode - devices redundancy/volume management and computation in HBA
  * Option ROM - Presented to the host BIOS to make the card bootable (and on IR firmware, volume management in pre-boot environment)
    * **mpt2sas.rom**/**mpt3sas.rom** - legacy BIOS option ROM
    * **mpt2x64.rom**/**mpt3x64.rom** - UEFI option ROM
    * It's optional to flash these after erasing the card (with -o -e 6), I usually don't install the option ROM as flashing these will delay your boot by multiple seconds due to the option ROM prompt

==== Finding & Downloading Firmware ====

  - [[https://www.broadcom.com/support/download-search|Broadcom Support Documents and Downloads]]
    - Product Group: Storage Adapters, Controllers, and ICs
    - Include Legacy Products: Check this box
    - Family: All Storage Adapters, Controllers, and ICs
    - Product Name: [name of your product, e.g. 9311-8i]
  - Click Search

===== Updating =====

//Notes: For LSI2008 (92xx) cards, use sas2flash; for LSI3008 (93xx) cards, use sas3flash; On MS-DOS/FreeDOS, use sas2flsh/sas3flsh instead of sas2flash/sas3flash//

  * IR to IR, IT to IT
    - sas2flash -o -f [firmware.bin] [-b mpt2sas.rom] [-b mpt2x64.rom]
  * IR to IT, IT to IR
    - sas2flash -o -e 6
    - sas2flash -o -f [firmware.bin] [-b mpt2sas.rom] [-b mpt2x64.rom]

===== Recovery =====

Important note: Newer motherboards (within the past 2 years?) will throw this error, "Failed to initialize PAL". You may need to use an older (pre-10th gen Intel) motherboard for this. There is no EFI version of the LSI PreBoot tools.

  - Prepare a [[https://www.ventoy.net/|Ventoy]] USB flash drive
  - Download LSI_PreBoot_CD.iso from [[https://www.broadcom.com/support/knowledgebase/1211161499804/lsi-pre-boot-usb-tool-download|LSI Pre-Boot USB tool Download]] (FTP client required, e.g. Firefox)
  - Place the ISO file into Ventoy USB flash drive
  - Boot Ventoy in legacy mode (UEFI will not work)
  - Choose the appropriate menu item for your card, this will bring your card back into a working state on relatively old firmware