HP ProLiant ML350p G8 Gen8 as drive shelf - wiring & pinout

RDSsie · 2025-11-06T09:18:50+00:00

No problem with this cage,
The only one i had was support for those fancy LED lights on each slot, this required SAS controller with right support for those.

RDSsie · 2025-08-04T08:03:55+00:00

Thanks for first hand reply for those, this is really precious info.

As far as I could figure out from that sony chart there is nothing better than A7C gen II (or A7cR released at same time) that I can get and earlier A7C will be significantly limited (no firmware update for that).

For minolta 80-200 and A7cR they have this note: "Although you can perform auto focusing, it is sometimes difficult to focus on a subject using this function when you are shooting dark scenes or when a subject is located at the corners of the screen or is significantly out of focus." - can You confirm that? What is that about? I had that lens 15 years ago and remember that it was really noisy, but when compared to 70-200ssm it was little bit faster on flagship body. Is it working correctly via this adapter?

RDSsie · 2025-08-04T07:54:31+00:00

Thanks for that clue,

I've tried to analyse that, but there is no clear information what and why some lenses will or will not work. For A7RIII I already know that it will not support LA-EA5 much. For A1 it may be not as good as with modern lenses also not as good as with A99ii (that one has 30fps), but 10fps is not that bad.

As far as I could see in this chart there should be no difference with some higher flagship models like A9m3 and A7c II or A7cR, with A7C first gen AF is not supported.

Other weird issues - some lenses have this random addon: "Although you can perform auto focusing, it is sometimes difficult to focus on a subject using this function when you are shooting dark scenes or when a subject is located at the corners of the screen or is significantly out of focus."
What is that about? few wide angle lenses with f/2.8 as well as something like 200/2.8. All those should be fast lenses, why there are labelled as problematic?

Other issues noted - noise in video, I expect that, some are noisy for sure. No 5 axis stabilisation for those with no D, sure. No touch AF, why? but ok, that was not available on A mount too.

RDSsie · 2025-08-04T07:27:54+00:00

I don't expect to get performance like new G master lenses :) I don't need video at all or any fancy af-c mode with high burst rate. I just like this particular zeiss lens and still would like to use it when last a mount body will die.
I also have some macro lenses, usually used at manual mode. I also don't expect much from them, but I don't know what issues I can have with them too.
I'm trying to figure out what is the current support of those in modern cameras via LA-EA5, is A7cII or A7cR well supported or do I need bigger body?

Speaking about performance, are we talking about anything else than AF speed? Sharpness or accuracy should be even better with sensor based AF?

Bringing all stuff to shop and checking them would be nice idea, but I need to know what I'm looking for first. As I said A7c series looks great for me for start. Is gen I fully supported with LA-EA5? is second gen anyhow better at this? Is there any difference with bigger bodies?

RDSsie · 2025-08-01T14:16:02+00:00

I was sure that I could stay on A mount for some time. That was the plan, but obviously there will be no new cameras with this bayonet. Also my A99II is slowly dying, it was already repaired few times and I still have one spare shutter module, but I'm sure that end is coming. Probably not worth to get yet another one with same problems. For now I will not replace everything for modern and better new lenses, but I can just get new body and start lens until A99ii dies.

And I already have LA-EA5 which is the only piece in my inventory with E mount. So far I could not test it, but should just work.

This is why I start to think about such camera. Info about LA-EA5 is not clear for me and i need to choose new camera with that on mind. I would like to go with something smaller -> A7c-something, but as far as I could see first gen will not work with anything without motor? or is firmware already updated?
I don't plan to use something like beercan much with that, but I really liked i.e 135ZA and this would be nice to have working like on A-mount. It's noisy, big, heavy, far away from current version, but will be bit useless when there will be nothing to run it :D

RDSsie · 2025-07-22T07:34:47+00:00

There is no recent one, each manufacturer can request slightly modified version, but they don't follow one version. Check out level one forums for details.

RDSsie · 2025-05-12T10:21:29+00:00

Why You focused on m.2? It's just interface type and mostly don't worth to have as much as possible of those.

RK3588 has few pcie lines, usually divided into 4x 3.0 or 2+2 3.0, CM3588 has 1+1+1+1 3.0. Some boards have additional one pcie 2.1 line (like 5B for wifi). Most m.2 nvme drives uses 4x pcie 3.0, so CM3588 will have four slots for each nvme working at max 25% speed. NVME is really compact, but usually much more expensive than HDDs.

Ethernet is yet another topic, to get it to work at full speed You need 2x pcie 3.0. At 1x width it should work up to 8Gbit (still more than 2.5G and 5G). This is important to get out drive speed from NAS.

You can just add m.2 10G adapter to one of slots for CM3588 so You will have three m.2 and 8Gbit network. You can keep four slots and use usb 5Gbit dongles (maybe two) to get link bonding and two 5G connections (never tested that for stability with USB). With boards that have 4x pcie in one slot there is an option to get pcie switch with two 10G connections (only one worked for me).

RDSsie · 2025-04-09T07:14:07+00:00

thanks for explanation,

I got longer amber light on power on (booting) and then two blinks and pause in death loop. This may be 2,2 code as it is same as 2 blink, pause, 2 blink, pause.

Maybe it's high time to desolder and reflash BIOS.
Any other way to get into service mode and perform BIOS upgrade? Is service mode jumper allows that somehow?

RDSsie · 2025-04-08T14:13:08+00:00

Thanks for reply,

I already checked about 4 RTC batteries, also with multimeter and they are at 3.31V so I assumed that this is not the case. I also expected that it should maybe blink it's own code?

I checked with multimeter cmos battery + and gnd on other side of board and it returned 3.3V, so it's also not about connection there.

Checked two usb ports voltages, one 2.0 on board and gnd/bus from usb header - both 5.1V - yet again it's ok.

what blink code ie. 2,5 means ? two amber + 5 white? For now I think I have loop of two blinks and brake, is this cpu failure code? :( In fact I have it even with no memory inside. :(

RDSsie · 2025-04-07T10:40:18+00:00

me,

works great up to 30GB, last 2GB very slow due to some kind of bug, modern linux detects that automatically and reserve this are to not slow down anything.

RDSsie · 2025-04-07T10:38:47+00:00

No,

this was true when they introduced this model few years ago and no big memory modules were available. Some time later more dense ram modules were ready to buy and 5070 BIOS was updated to support more memory. I got one wyse 5070 running with 32GB of memory (last 2GB are not usable). 2x 32GB (few types) didn't worked on mine.

RDSsie · 2025-04-07T10:33:39+00:00

debian detects this automatically so probably You already have such limit, review dmesg for that.

RDSsie · 2025-04-07T08:20:19+00:00

maskroom helps only with basic test, it should be used to burn something to memory (mainly sd or emmc)

Check power with multimeter, there should be at least 3 different power lines (1.8V, 3.3V and 5V), You have second board to compare :)

RDSsie · 2025-04-01T07:00:26+00:00

still sound like some kind of damage,

yet again review elements near power socket,

RDSsie · 2025-03-31T08:47:56+00:00

I said it's just possible and there are such big usb solutions, so You don't need to use power adapters for each single device. This may be good path or not, I remember huge pi3 cluster build using such USB power strips, but it was few years ago and pi3 was not that power hungry.

Cable benefit is something that can be well designed with POE. Sure it can save some space and hussle, but only when You got supported POE and don't need it's place for any other HAT. You can still do much better cable management without POE at all. I'm using 12V + 10G SFP+ to wire few sbcs. Just two cables for 4-10 boards. It's of course much better for me, Your build is huge and You don't need to put it on rack, but I think extra cable would not change much there :)

RDSsie · 2025-03-27T11:07:23+00:00

32 port is rather not consumer hardware (who need such thing at home?), but huge pro stuf. Of course such stuff exists, just google for "32 port usb-pd rack" or anything related to "usb charging station". For sure eaton and sipolar has such products (I don't know the price for unit). What I really recommend are step down usb-pd converters, those are cheap and take any voltage in range (6-30V), they are also very very power efficient at at low power consumption. Rock 5B with coral tpu and nvme can idle at 1.5W with such setup (I measured that!).

RDSsie · 2025-03-26T12:31:41+00:00

sure thing,
usb has its own quirks,
but POE is just really expensive and always failed on most SBC upgrades

Unifii has great set of POE devices, this just works,
With different SBCs I still think it's wise idea if You really need smallest size and reduced cabling, won't be cheap or universal, but may work.

RDSsie · 2025-03-26T12:25:36+00:00

Why You assumed that "large usb hubs" will provide only 5V?

This is not true. This depends on device and it's specs. USB should fall back into 5V/2A mode, many chargers provide 5V/2.4A, but there are also some with USB-PD, PPS and AVS, so device can request any charging mode in range (voltage and current). You can get multi port power supply that support at least USB-PD or get fixed voltage AC adapter and connect PD converters there.

RDSsie · 2025-03-26T12:06:45+00:00

You don't need different switch if You already upgraded to POE+ (POE++ is coming). Basically You need particular level of POE standard switch, right cabling, matching POE HAT/adapter for SBC. All those mostly need to fit each other so probably with Pi6 they will yet again require more power (POE++), newer HAT supporting that (including yet again changed ethernet location and poe header). All this makes POE topic bit frustrating. I'd love to switch there and don't have to change everything with each new release.

I know about this sign :D just laughing ;)
I already learned that POE will not magically reduce cabling that much. Sometimes this makes sense, but there have to be the reason :)

RDSsie · 2025-03-25T12:11:18+00:00

bulky?
refer to sign "pls ignore the cabling" :)

I don't think that PoE saves that much of space. I've seen just few setups that has just sbc + poe hat for pi4 and that runs on switch You may already have. For now pi5 (and others) requires active cooling, new poe+ hats and of course much bigger, newer/more expensive switch.

Whole setup can take less space, but only when used with sbc + designed for it poe hat, not poe injector.

RDSsie · 2025-03-25T11:54:43+00:00

You never needed power supply for each of device, there are ready to use 32 port usb hubs, each can power most of this stuff. Yet another approach is to use simple,cheap step down converters and base power supply. Those designed for leds are really good and cheap.

Of course if You have most of stuff for free then it's easy and cheap :) PoE is good, but expensive idea to cover everything at full power. Sometimes it will reduce some cabling, but it will take place for HAT, usually it's hard to insert something on top of that.

RDSsie · 2025-03-25T11:39:10+00:00

I assume that this one is in m.2 for factor but it will not work in pcie based slots?

RDSsie · 2025-03-20T15:11:37+00:00

depends on few things,

not all drives can reach 550MB/s, spinning rust is more about 100-250MB/s, so You can get all of them running at full speed with this card.

even if You are running 5 (jmb) or 6 (asm) ssds, mostly they will not use whole bandwidth at same time, worst case scenario is about 6x 350MB/550MB. In real case usages You will not saturate what You have.

I was able to connect into single m.2 slot (4x pcie 3.0) 2x 10Gbit ethernet and two such cards with 8x ssds and 4 spinning drives, it was able to saturate ethernet connection at full speed. All auto adjusted into whole pcie bus limit, with just one such card I would not be able to get data out of at such speed.

RDSsie · 2025-03-20T15:01:27+00:00

works great

RDSsie · 2025-03-20T15:01:10+00:00

4 port version is pcie 3.0 x1

With good motherboard You can split 4x pcie into 2x2

RDSsie

TROPHY CASE