SOL screen just black

[frank_steiner]

Hi,
I'm new here and hope this is the right place to ask :-) I searched through old posts but couldn't find a solution to the following:
I setup AMT on a HP dc7700 and can use the web gui, the Intel AMT commander and "amttool" in Linux to connect to this host. But any try of using SOL just shows a black screen.

I tried Linux with the right "console=ttyS..." parameters without success, and even with the Intel AMT Terminal I can see nothing. I send the "Remoted reboot to bios" command from the terminal and the host rebooted into the bios, but the terminal window stayed black all the time. I switched between UFT8 and Ansi, no change. The terminal windows says "Serial-over-Lan - connected" all the time. Dis- and reconnecting doesn't help.

Any ideas why the screen stays black?

cu,
Frank

P.S.: I'm using the Intel AMT Developer Tool Kit v0.48x and AMT firmware 2.2.1.1034 (although I don't know if this is an Intel or a HP release number...)

[Ylian_S_Intel]

Hi. Intel AMT Commander does not really know if serial-over-LAN connection is dropped, so, after you reboot to BIOS, try going in the terminal menu and disconnect and connect again. After that, press a few keys to see if the BIOS responds.

When the Intel AMT computer is in the OS, you will not see anything on the terminal unless you have a serial agent running. Run Intel AMT Outpost on the AMT computer and enable the serial agent. Make sure you ahve the serial-over-LAN drivers installed. You should see the Outpost management prompt on the terminal.

UTF-8 terminal emulation should never be used, I don't know anything that supports that mode.

I hope this helps, please let us know what your results are.

Thanks,
Ylian (Intel AMT Blog)

[frank_steiner]

Hi,
thanks for caring! I tried to remote boot to Bios and dis- and reconnected, but I still don't get any screen output and the remote PC/Bios does not respond to any keys that I type int the AMT Terminal :-(
I also tried "reboot remoted" and pressed F10 and Esc-0 to make the remote PC enter the bios, but it seems that no key press reaches the remote PC...
I double checked that SOL is enabled in the AMT bios on the remote PC.
Could that be an issue of the dc7700? Anything known about this HP models?

cu,
Frank

[Ylian_S_Intel]

Arg. I am so sorry it's not working for you. Of course, everyone will tell you to get the latest firmware from HP. If that does not work, you have one last chance... you may have to replace the IMRSDK.dll with an older one. If you need to, I can point you to a really old version of the DTK, take the old version of IMRSDK.dll and put it in the new DTK then try. It would be really sad if an older version worked, but well... it's possible. On the other hand, I have an Ultraslim dc7700 in my own lab (Thanks HP!) and it works fine for me. In fact, it's one of the two AMT 2.1 platforms I test on a regular basis, the other one is the Intel DQ965GF, an Intel board. I did update my dc7700 at some point, I don't have the original BIOS on it.

As a side note, the original BIOS on my dc7700 would send VT100 color codes and mouse movement before each character on the screen making everything really slow. The update fixed that. If you are using the most current version of the BIOS, I will update mine to match and see what I can do.

Thanks,
Ylian (Intel AMT Blog)

[frank_steiner]

Hi,
I do have the latest BIOS and AMT Firmware from the HP homepage. This is version 3.03, and it contains AMT firmware 2.2.1.1034. I couldn't go back to a 2.0 firmware because I don't find such an old bios on the HP page...
Strange that your dc7700 works while mine doesn't... I guess there should be no difference between the ultraslim and the miditower dc7700 regarding vpro.

I will be happy to try the older DTK version if you can tell me where to get it!
Thanks for caring!

[Ylian_S_Intel]

Hi there. This may be useful for a few people to have links to older version of the Intel AMT DTK. Of course, you should always use the latest version when possible.

So, here are some older versions:

Intel AMT DTK v0.21
Intel AMT DTK v0.33
Intel AMT DTK v0.41

I would just try the oldest one and see if it makes a difference. Older versions are self-extract so you don't need to remove the current version. Please let us know what you find!

Ylian (Intel AMT Blog)

[frank_steiner]

Hmm, looks like I'm lost here :-( I've no success with any of the old versions. I can always execute remote commands like "remoted reboot to Bios", but the SOL screen stays black all the time, no matter how often I dis- and reconnect. And although the Terminal shows "SOL connected", no key press comes to the remote system. Whatever key I press during the remote PC is in the bios, nothing happens in the bios...
I've also asked HP for help and they opened the case, but their support remains silent since two weeks :-(

[frank_steiner]

Just to let you know that we got hands on a dc7800, and there SOL works with exactly the same AMT settings we use for the dc7700. We can see the screen output in the Intel AMT commander and navigate through the bios etc. So it's indeed an issue specific to our dc7700... We'll see what HP figures out (a support case has been open for 6 weeks without any reaction so far...). I'll let you know if they succeed!

[Ylian_S_Intel]

Thanks for letting us know. Please keep posting any information you have, I am sure it can help others. By the way, the new version of the DTK v0.51 can detect when SOL is disconnected and will updated the upper left connection status correctly. i have a bug in the past that kept is saying "Connected" even when it was not. So on that dc7700 and the new DTK, you should be able to see if you are connected and getting nothing, or the connection to SOL is lost (in that case, just try to reconnect using the terminal menu).

Ylian (Intel AMT Blog)

[frank_steiner]

HP finally exchanged the mainboards of our three dc7700 that couldn't get SOL working, and now it runs fine on all three machines :-)
Looks like they had a series of mainboards that had a problem with AMTA for some reason...

Thanks again for all your support!

[Sreelekshm_S_Intel]

Hi,

Glad to know that the issue is solved. Thanks for letting us know this.

Thanks,

Sree