[Electrical] Mother board for Fiery 306 pro80

[Saghir377]

Hi every body Dear i need one mother board of IC 306 (S 5217)main board. Kindly help me where to by if some body have used ic306 or main board kindly contact me saghir377@yahoo.com

[Mr Spock]

Re: Mother board for Fiery 306 pro80

some fiery's use a specific motherboard. If you look you may see a screen print model number. If so google it and see if has a manufacturer associated with it. if so contact them about warranty and/or replacement cost. I did that with one fiery and motherboard was 100.00 usd from manufacturer and 300.00 usd from fiery. guess which one I ordered.

[oxident]

Re: Mother board for Fiery 306 pro80

Sorry to say but this won't work. The IC306 mainboard is indeed a Tyan build and you could theoretically use almost any other mainboard, you won't get it working because there are license settings inside the BIOS. Even if you can extract these, you will get a problem because those settings are bound to the MAC address :-(

So, don't waste your time (did this already...) and order a new one from EFI.

[Synaux]

Re: Mother board for Fiery 306 pro80

Sorry to say but this won't work. The IC306 mainboard is indeed a Tyan build and you could theoretically use almost any other mainboard, you won't get it working because there are license settings inside the BIOS. Even if you can extract these, you will get a problem because those settings are bound to the MAC address :-(

So, don't waste your time (did this already...) and order a new one from EFI.

The settings are bound to the MAC address?
I don't think so.

[Synaux]

Re: Mother board for Fiery 306 pro80

Hi every body Dear i need one mother board of IC 306 (S 5217)main board. Kindly help me where to by if some body have used ic306 or main board kindly contact me saghir377@yahoo.com

Check the capacitors...it is an easy fix if you can identify some bad capacitors (:
Also try a CMOS reset.

[oxident]

Re: Mother board for Fiery 306 pro80

The settings are bound to the MAC address?
I don't think so.

Well, they are. If you run the configman tool (\efi\server\system) you can see pretty much details about how EFI reads various license details out of a reserved space inside the mainboards bios and compares it to the current hardware. Besides of dongle activated features like GA or PP, it also contains the MAC address(es) of the NICs. If they don't match, the server will simply shut down.

I guess that's because they don't want you to simply buy a cheap mainboard and a single VX500 card to "clone" your expensive IC306 :-(

[jotunn]

Re: Mother board for Fiery 306 pro80

The settings are bound to the MAC address?
I don't think so.

Oxident is right.

Check motherboard replacement procedure in any of EFI Fiery service manual - when you order new motherboard from EFI you will also get a special dongle to create EFI BIOS addon inside an original TYAN BIOS. This will contain a serial number, mac addresses, type of controller, EFI BIOS version, options/features and so on. So you can't just replace Fiery motherboard with any other - even with the same type TYAN motherboard.

The other thing, there are some types of controllers with motherboards made by TYAN especially for EFI, they are not available for customers, you can't even download an original BIOS or documentation for those motherboards.

[Synaux]

Re: Mother board for Fiery 306 pro80

Oxident is right.

Check motherboard replacement procedure in any of EFI Fiery service manual - when you order new motherboard from EFI you will also get a special dongle to create EFI BIOS addon inside an original TYAN BIOS. This will contain a serial number, mac addresses, type of controller, EFI BIOS version, options/features and so on. So you can't just replace Fiery motherboard with any other - even with the same type TYAN motherboard.

The other thing, there are some types of controllers with motherboards made by TYAN especially for EFI, they are not available for customers, you can't even download an original BIOS or documentation for those motherboards.

Okay...you basically detailed how Oxident is incorrect. He stated:
"Even if you can extract these [license settings], you will get a problem because those settings are bound to the MAC address"

The Basic In Out System (BIOS) is drastically different than the media access control (MAC) Address (sort of like the serial number of the NIC).
Any proprietary information form EFI (or Tyan for that matter) will be bound to the BIOS and not the MAC address.
Now that I am going through this again, I think Oxident simply did not type what he really meant to convey.?

[jotunn]

Re: Mother board for Fiery 306 pro80

Synaux... maybe we didn't want to tell in public area how does it exactly work...

My post wasn't negating any facts from Oxident post - I'm not so fluent in english so maybe some thoughts wasn't clear enough.

I will try to clear some facts - each network card has some non-volatile memory where are stored important settings, for example MAC address; unique and factory bound to each network card. The same in case of mainboards with integrated network card(s). This memory isn't easily accessible for user and always this is separate from BIOS chip - so you can use such data (in our case MAC address) to precisely identify a mainboard. When you write a MAC address in empty BIOS space, you've got a pair that is bound together (this is the reason why you can't just replace a BIOS chip).
When you've got such bound hardware, it's easy to create a software that will check those MAC addresses and compare them with those stored inside software. If they differ, software just refuses to start.

Clear enough?

[oxident]

Re: Mother board for Fiery 306 pro80

Okay...you basically detailed how Oxident is incorrect. He stated:
"Even if you can extract these [license settings], you will get a problem because those settings are bound to the MAC address"

The Basic In Out System (BIOS) is drastically different than the media access control (MAC) Address (sort of like the serial number of the NIC).
Any proprietary information form EFI (or Tyan for that matter) will be bound to the BIOS and not the MAC address.
Now that I am going through this again, I think Oxident simply did not type what he really meant to convey.?

Okay, maybe my thoughts were faster than my typing speed. Please excuse me ;-)

Let me say it in different words:
EFI uses a free gap in the MB's flash memory to store a block of private data. Besides of the serial and model number, it also contains the licensed features and (that's the important point) the MAC address of the installed NIC (up to two). As jotunn correctly said, the sole purpose of this is to bind this private data block to this particular mainboard. Otherwise, you could simply read out the BIOS and clone it to a different Fiery or device in common.

You can easily check this for yourself: Simply spoof the MAC address of your Fiery's NIC to something else. Then try to start the Fiery service ... after a minute or so, it will initiate a shutdown.
If you open Fiery.exe in a console, you will notice that the "MAC security validation" has failed.

[Synaux]

Re: Mother board for Fiery 306 pro80

Synaux... maybe we didn't want to tell in public area how does it exactly work...

My post wasn't negating any facts from Oxident post - I'm not so fluent in english so maybe some thoughts wasn't clear enough.

I will try to clear some facts - each network card has some non-volatile memory where are stored important settings, for example MAC address; unique and factory bound to each network card. The same in case of mainboards with integrated network card(s). This memory isn't easily accessible for user and always this is separate from BIOS chip - so you can use such data (in our case MAC address) to precisely identify a mainboard. When you write a MAC address in empty BIOS space, you've got a pair that is bound together (this is the reason why you can't just replace a BIOS chip).
When you've got such bound hardware, it's easy to create a software that will check those MAC addresses and compare them with those stored inside software. If they differ, software just refuses to start.

Clear enough?

Cleared. Nothing to disagree with there
I didn't mean to cause such a ruckus.

[oxident]

Re: Mother board for Fiery 306 pro80

Cleared. Nothing to disagree with there
I didn't mean to cause such a ruckus.

Everything's fine ... after all, we're all experts, aren't we?

Any ideas for the original problem?

[Synaux]

Re: Mother board for Fiery 306 pro80

Well, I see the motherboard part number is 45110855.
I did a quick google search and only found one result here; therefore, Saghir might be forced to deal with EFI.

Saghir, what exactly is the Fiery doing (or not doing)?
Are you sure the motherboard is bad??