Bugreport BIOS F8 and GA-MA785GMT-UD2H. Need attention from Gigabyte!!

[crazycheese]

Do you guys have a possiblity to inform official upstream? I have found a regression.

Board: GA-MA785GMT-UD2H v1.1(v1.3 may also be affected)
Important hw: Keyboard MS-Tech LT390
Other hw: AII x4 630, 2x2gb ddr3-1600 from excelram(mushkin), Powercolor HD4770
Affected Bios: F8
Problem does not exist in pre F8,  tested and confirmed F7 and F5 revisions.

Summary: Wireless 2.4Ghz input devices (not bluetooth) are NOT detected, resulting in:

1) unability to access any bios settings or options including QFlash
2) unability to select boot device
2) unability to select operating system later on in bootloader. Bootloaders affected: GRUB(linux), ntloader(xp)

If you plug ANY wired keyboard in (Cherry Cybo@rd) and press any key, including Del - to trigger Enter BIOS, wireless starts working (as a second, concurrent device)!

Things I tried:
reflashing with DMI clear;
power off for 20 minutes with CMOS reset;
unplugins all USB devices;
using only failsafe defaults;
trying other USB ports;
switching channel on USB dongle;

The F5 and F7 BIOS has an option:
"USB Keyboard support" and "USB Mouse support"

F8 does NOT have it.

Proof:

[crazycheese]

I have tried F6 yesterday, F6 does not have this too. Im using F7 right now.
To test you HAVE to have only one wireless 2.4 keyboard connected(remove all other keyboards) on >USB<.

Flash to F8, using 1.1 board, with fail-safe defaults load in QFlash.
Remember to powerdown the PC right after flashing for short moment.

For me keyboard starts working only after bios and bootloader - in the operating system (you can easily test it with any linux livecd).

This keyboard was already used on Abit NF7-S and Asrock P43ME without this issue.
It works with F5,F6 and F7; but not with F8.

[crazycheese]

Ok, I have tracked down the issue.

With BIOS revision F8, no wireless keyboard is detected if the reciever is connected via USB Hub. It is detected if connected directly to motherboard.

USB Hubs are used to make the dongles point in keyboard direction and not to wall - this increases the range a LOT and to spare front ports(if present).

I have a passive Hub from Skymaster, this one: http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/310oqaOjltL.jpg
Both mouse and keyboard reciever are connected to it.

With BIOS F7, everything works.

With BIOS rev F8, 2.4Ghz wireless keyboard only works if it is connected directly to motherboard. Recievers on usb hubs(passive, maybe active are affected too) are not scanned. My front USB panel has 1port on motherboard-1port front mapping, so it works for front panels too, unless they are built like a hub(multiplyer)

Hope Gigabyte can look fix it, or at least this info can be usefull for someone.  

[Spooky]

Yep, same issue here. A keyboard connected via an USB hub will not detected until after POST with BIOS revision F8. It's a bit annoying.


On a side note: F8 is also missing the option to deactivate the onboard PATA controller. Not that important, but I still wanted to mention it.

[absic]

Hi,

Just to add a later update to this thread  in case anyone else is experiencing these or similar problems

Used this same board (ver 1.0) on a build for a friend and he had no issues for 6 months, until the F8 BIOS. Once the BIOS was update to F8 the system became very unstable, dropped hard-drives when booting and would hang without any reason.

There must have been a glitch with the F8 BIOS as Gigabyte quickly followed it with an F9 update which seems to be stable.

I would advise anyone when considering doing a BIOS update to be aware that just because a BIOS version is newer it doesn't always mean that it is better and if your system is running OK you really do not need to update BIOS.

If you do update BIOS and you notice that there are problems you can always re-flash with an earlier version. Unless, of course, you have to upgrade  due to a new CPU that isn't supported by an earlier release.

Hope this helps anyone faced with the same problems.

[crazycheese]

Yep, same issue here. A keyboard connected via an USB hub will not detected until after POST with BIOS revision F8. It's a bit annoying.


On a side note: F8 is also missing the option to deactivate the onboard PATA controller. Not that important, but I still wanted to mention it.

I have reported the issue on german and taiwan Gigabyte techreport. Both did some short test(although using v1.0 board!!!) and reported no problem. Although I really have a feeling I was talking to german techs(not taiwanese) and they did it in a very careless manner(like ignoring board revisions, ignoring I was using passive and not active hub; first time ignoring I was using 2.4 Ghz wireless-on-a-stick and not previous generation 800mhz, and second time using BLUETOOTH KEYBOARD(!!!). *facepalm*

http://ggts.gigabyte.com.tw/gtsemail.asp?UserEmail=lct@mail.ru&EmailID=918761&EmailPreviousID=915432&OpenEmail=N&LanguageID=5


This got to such a ridicious level, I had to make a VIDEO of this thing not working as expected just to show Im serious about this bug! In exchange, they offered me to change my USB Hub (that has wonderfully worked on my previous boards from Abit, ASRock and Asus).

I payed and changed it. Using LogiLink(logitech division) UA0026A Active/Passive 7Port Hub, the issue still persists. F6-ok, F7-ok, F8-no keyboard, F9a-no keyboard, F9-no keyboard.

Hi,

Just to add a later update to this thread  in case anyone else is experiencing these or similar problems

Used this same board (ver 1.0) on a build for a friend and he had no issues for 6 months, until the F8 BIOS. Once the BIOS was update to F8 the system became very unstable, dropped hard-drives when booting and would hang without any reason.

There must have been a glitch with the F8 BIOS as Gigabyte quickly followed it with an F9 update which seems to be stable.

I would advise anyone when considering doing a BIOS update to be aware that just because a BIOS version is newer it doesn't always mean that it is better and if your system is running OK you really do not need to update BIOS.

If you do update BIOS and you notice that there are problems you can always re-flash with an earlier version. Unless, of course, you have to upgrade  due to a new CPU that isn't supported by an earlier release.

Hope this helps anyone faced with the same problems.

For me F7 version does not boot first time. It means, just after the just first cold boot I have to immediately poweroff the system and boot it again. Otherwise GRUB bootloader may just reboot upon reaching, linux kernel may only find ONE CPU(Cpu1 not responding, cpu2 not responding,cpu3 not responding), windows xp freeses just at boot screen(note I have it on separate hard drive, so its NOT affected by GRUB at all, its 100% sane). I think AMD AGEISA may have fixed this in F8, but currently Im unable to use anything F8 and up.

Gigabyte, GA-MA785GMT-UD2H V1.1 with BIOS F8+ is UNABLE to detect ANY wireless 2.4 Ghz keyboard at boot stage, when the wireless dongle is connected via ANY Usb Hub. And connecting via Hub and not directly is very common way to improve dongle range and signal quality, since when connected (normally) behind the PC its range is seriously reduced(lags, eating keystrokes etc).

Please put USB LEGACY KEYBOARD SUPPORT bios option as seen in F7 and before BACK.
"USB LEGACY SUPPORT" does NOT solve this!

You have "What do you think of our support, vote now" banner here right now up. What do I think of your support? Its incompetent and unserious. Im with this bug for half of the year and NO ONE ever care to go down the issue! Amazing, AMAZING.

[Dark Mantis]

It does seem to be going on a long time now with no solution. Have you sent a pm to runn3R he is the official Gigabyte representative and should be able to get you some help? If the BIOS revisions are not working as you report then it needs looking into and a fresh update writing.

[crazycheese]

It does seem to be going on a long time now with no solution. Have you sent a pm to runn3R he is the official Gigabyte representative and should be able to get you some help? If the BIOS revisions are not working as you report then it needs looking into and a fresh update writing.

Thanks, but I have tried to contact him just on the second day I detected this issue and still no reply.

*UPDATE*It seems only revision 1.1 boards GA-MA785GMT-UD2H have this. ALSO keyboard type plays NO role. It just must be connected via HUB.
Gigabyte crew seems to have detected the issue now. This is awesome. At last hopefully the iceberg starts moving *phew* 

It could be any keyboard type, anyway I was suggested that my wireless keyboard (MS-Tech LT-390) produces this behaviour (which I hardly doubt of, because the wireless mouse reciever has a LED that blinks if its connected and recieves commands from the mouse; but it also stayed absolutely off on F8-F9 and blinked in F7, although no mouse is used in BIOS).
So I connected old wired Cherry keyboard to the hub and ... same behaviour.
Check this out:
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=EAEQNVXS
http://www.filefactory.com/file/b269hga/n/V050710_15_41_3gp
http://ul.to/isdppn

So now, the issue looks like:

Motherboard: GA-MA785GMT-UD2H             Revision:1.1      BIOS: F8 and up(F7 works)
Keyboard: ANY USB type                Connected via: USB HUB(any type) 
Problem: Keyboard is not detected at BIOS stage at all. You cannot go BIOS, select operating systems if you use bootloader etc.

Current recommendation is to stay with buggy F7 BIOS. Well, its something

[Dark Mantis]

Well at least that is some progress and aknowledgement of the problem. Hopefully they will produce a BIOS update to take it into account.

[runn3R]

Hi crazycheese

I have discovered some communication problem by PM with you due to your email server rejecting messages from our server informing you about PM being received.
Please put your alternative email (from other domain) into our forum : Profile -> Account Related Settings