Be curious to see a set up of the working product when you have one.
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could the connectivity issues be the board not able to power up to 75w? lower wattages dont trigger the issue but then an uknown limit triggers a power loss or something?
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That’s a good idea however i do not believe that is the issue. I have load tested the DC-DC converters with an electronic load i have and they are very stable at 3.3v and 12v.
I even tested the board with an ATX power supply powering it instead of my converters and the issue still persists.
I have ordered the new board and they should be here sometime late next week
as far as i remember to enable the pcie lanes you used the “bios” of the other person’s oculink adapter that essentially tells the motherboard that its a “7700s”, could it maybe be that when it detects another gpu connected to the supposedly 7700s it gets confused and gives those issues due to mismatching gpus? but if it were the case it would give issues with the oculink adapter too
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I recompiled my own EEPROM as the OCULINK one disables any power output from the interposer. The new boards should be here today an the digikey order will be hear early next week
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The boards arrived. After assembling them and testing it. I was able to use a PCIE to m.2 board + 1tb SSD and successfully boot from it. However when i plug in a GPU. i am no longer able to see it (even in its half initialized state) in device manager. I then go to try the M.2 Board again and now i cant see the M.2 Drive.
I am currently debugging this as i am not sure what i did to break it
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Any progress?
if it’s a power issue, maybe including a ATX power connector would fix it?
(because let’s face it, we are going to use a PSU to power our Graphics cards anyway).
unfortunately there is not much progress.
I’ve ruled out power dips/fluctuation issues.
I’ve updated my FW16 AI 9 HX 370 bios from 3.05 to 3.06 (have not tested if this made any difference
I’m not sure what else to test or what else could be the issue. i’ve checked continuity between every PCIE and signal traces, i’ve made sure that i properly calculated the impedance for the differential pairs.
I’m not sure why it works with a PCIE USB hub & an SSD but not a GPU. Even though the PCIE hub only uses x2 lanes and the SSD uses x4 lanes, the GPU should still be able to run with x4 lanes just with reduced performance.
I’m going to try with the updated BIOS later today
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i don’t see how a bios update would change anything?
maybe the problem is in whatever firmware makes it look like a 7700s? maybe you need the new graphics cards firmware to compare?
stupid question: is there a way to see a more in depth error message?
is this communication standard documented anywhere?
or is there some way to ask support “m.2 are running but not graphics cards, where should i look for the problem”?
i will humbly add that this is a bit out of my area of expertise, but sometime even I need a newbie to ask stupid question to unstuck me
I’m not sure what a bios version change would do but i’ve heard others using an OCULINK board have had success with 3.07 (3.06 is the closest i can find).
At this point im just trying anything that comes to mind.
I’ve looked in Event Viewer for any errors but i cannot see anything. Might try to get a Ubuntu Install and see if i can get any lower level errors from that.,
probably, linux has a lot clearer errors usually.
and it remove a lot of windowns bulls*it getting in the way of debugging.
you can’t get the 3.07 Bios? how come they can but you can’t?
can you ask them for a copy maybe?
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@Pierre_Cruse my bet is that there was some miscommunication. 3.07 was last bios from series 3.x for FW 16 7040. current version 4.05.
FW 16 AI 300 has bios version 3.06 and 4.01
You can find older bios versions in forum announcement if you filter by category and tag Topics tagged bios-announcement
I have copy of bios 3.07 for FW 16 7040 if you want
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Hey Pierre, good work so far. I am impressed by your tenacity.
You good moneywise? I’d send you some bucks so you don’t have to live on bread and water alone. 
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I should have time tonight to install and test it, I just received some better quality solder paste and some water-soluble flux so i will reassemble a new test board.
I have my old 7040 Mainboard (the ssd slots dont work for some reason) that i was planning to use as my test bench however it seems that it will not display an output using any of the USB-C ports requiring me to use my laptop’s display. I will contact you about the 3.07 BIOS if i ever find a way to use the other Mainboard with an external display
Hello Castor,
Thanks for the encouragement. While i appreciate the offer i do not feel comfortable receiving any money until i can get a working prototype.
Assuming i get this to work, i will then move onto selling it on some online marketplace (I have zero experience in that department)
stupid question:
are you sure that all the interconect lanes connect properly?
because the way i understand it the m.2 only use half the lanes, and if your electrical problem is on the other half, you would miss it.(you probably ckecked it with a multimeter, but do you have a way to plug something on it to test them directly?)
I did check with a multimeter and they are connected properly. Regardless, the GPU should still be able to use 4 lanes instead of the full 8.
I am unaware of any other way to test those lanes aside from plugging in devices to check however the only device i have that uses more than 4 lanes is my 4070 ti super
maybe you can borrow or buy such a card?
for exemple a PCI x8 to 2xm.2 breakout board should be one of the cheapest options (like ~15/20$).
sadly i do not know how those firmware things work.
have you tried using claude on the problem to unstuck yourself?(as we have a lot of data as you already tested a lot of things).
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