Maybe I'm completely stupied today, but I seem to be completely incapable of finding firmware to download and install on a Broadcom NIC.
Am I a dunce, or is it not something that tends to be readily available?

You mean the drivers or the actual firmware on the NIC?

The firmware isn't generally available and has to be gotten from whoever manufacturers your NICs. I've updated the firmware on HP branded Broadcom NICs before with a HP tool that came packaged with the firmware update.

Broadcom NIC drivers however is just on the Broadcom site.

It is the iSCSI Boot bit of the card I want to upgrade from 4.0.19 to 4.1.19.
Does that also fall under the OEMs sphere of distribution?

Yup. You'd get that from Dell, HP, IBM or whoever it is that makes your card.

Wall meet head. Ugh!

So after much scurrying about apparently the Broadcom 57711 I have were not OEM'd by the server mfg, but by Cisco, sigh, and I don't currently have a Cisco account. Time to resolve that.
Mean time if anyone does have access to Cisco NIC firmware I'd appreciate a PM.

A Cisco-branded NIC? I didn't know there was any such thing. Do you have a model number?

Cisco refer to it as a N2XX-ABPC102 the 1 might be uppercase 'i'.
I'm this close to using an override option to put non-Cisco firmware on it, which will either resolve the problem, or give me a nice paperweight.

It's an "I" (eye).

However, I can only find one solitary, lame reference to that part number in Cisco's search.

Yup, that is all I am getting.
Well I'm lining up to shoehorn valid firmware but from a different OEM onto the card, either it will work, or I'll have a nice paperweight.

For reason I don't yet know we got Cisco Broadcom 10g NICs in our servers, and while they do have warranty coverage they are not under a Support contract, and so no firmware upgrades available.

I was able to use the Broadcom diag CD to push non-Cisco firmware to most of the card. I say most, as it contains three or four firmwares, and one firmware would not upgrade. However we were able to get what we needed and move on.

I would not recommend this process as bricking is a possibility, and there is possibly unknown issue with mixed firmwares. I will be spending time plugging the support hole or replacing these cards with suitable OEM'd ones.

Now off to play with iBFT.
Thanks Bitt and Trevor for the assistance.

Are they Cisco "Unified Computing" servers?

If it is from a UCS then you should be able to access those files on CCO with just a registered guest account without a SMARTnet contract attached to it.

I can't find anything for a N2XX-ABPCI02 though. It must be integrated into one of the big driver ISOs or packages.

What is the firmware portion that you can't upgrade? Most of the pieces I think are interchangable except the part that deals with the system management interfaces.

Nope, just run of the mill Dell rack servers, and hence the confusion as to why the NICs are Cisco OEM rather than Dell OEM.

I believe it was the MBA block of firmware that refused to flash.
In essence long term we need to either get the Cisco package, or get the cards replaced with Dell cards.

Dell doesn't have anything listed for these cards on their site?

If it is just MBA then it should be fine assuming the card is still working. MBA is for remote booting which I doubt you're using.

Not for the Cisco branded cards...
I believe MBA include iSCSI boot, which is what I am doing. (why does the tone of this sounds negitive?)
A co-worker with high Cisco access that I is slowly downloading the USC server bundle, we'll see what that holds.

Duh. Totally forgot that you said you were doing this to get iSCSI boot working. Sorry ><

iSCSI booting is part of MBA unfortunately. MBA is responsible for choosing the boot method, loading the drivers and then hooking into the rest of the boot process to get it started.

So you got these cards from Dell but they're Cisco branded so therefore Dell won't do anything for you and neither will Cisco because you don't have a service contract? I also understand why your head is meeting the wall regularly over this.

I just checked Cisco.com with my guest level account and it still shows that I've got access to the UCS driver bundles/ISOs.

There is a guy at Dell moving heaven and earth to get what I need. The only problem is that guy is me

Which is why I was so surprised to find these were Cisco NICs and not Dell NICs. I can only assume our local purchasing guy had difficult in getting these internally and went elsewhere.

We'll see what the UCS ISO contains on Monday.

Okay, I know this is an old thread, but I just have run into the similar situation recently. So for those who are *lucky* that they have a Cisco Broadcom 57711 in their Dell system, or even non-Dell (and non-Cisco of course) system, here is the solution to flash firmware under Windows (at least works for me):

1. Got to Dell website and download this file: Network_Firmware_THCKX_WN_7.4.8.EXE
2. Go to Cisco website and download this file:
ucs-c200-huu-1.4.3p.5.iso
3. Extract the Dell .exe file (it is an .zip archive actually) to a folder on your hard drive, say C:\BC
4. Extract the "PNUOSIMG.CGZ" from Cisco .iso file and save it somewhere
5. Download "cpio" for Windows (Google it!)
6. Rename "PNUOSIMG.CGZ" to "PNUOSIMG.GZ" then extract the "PNUOSIMG" to somewhere (say, C:\BC\firmware) using tools like WinRAR or WinZip etc
7. Now, open a command line window and "cd" to C:\BC\firmware, then run:
cpio -i < PNUOSIMG
8. Search for "BCM57711_pci_dual_port.img" in sub-folders - this is the file you want
9. Now go back to "C:\BC", then go into the "payload" folder
10.Run the below command (use "32" if you are on 32-bit machine):
..\64\winfwnx2 [mac_address] upgrade -ib_ipv4n6 ibootv74.02
This is to ensure your iSCSI entry matches the one in Cisco image
11.Copy "BCM57711_pci_dual_port.img" to "payload" folder
12.Run the below command:
..\64\winfwnx2 [mac_address] restorenvram BCM57711_pci_dual_port.img
13.It should prompt a message about reboot machine. You can use the below command to confirm:
..\64\winfwnx2 [mac_address] dir

You are looking for something similar to this:

*******************************************************************************
Broadcom NetXtremeII Firmware Upgrade Utility for Windows 2.4.7.0
*******************************************************************************

C Brd MAC Drv Name
- ---- ------------ --- ------------------------------------------------------
0 164F xxxxxxxxxxxx Yes [0070] Broadcom BCM57711 NetXtreme II 10 GigE #70
1 164F xxxxxxxxxxxx Yes [0071] Broadcom BCM57711 NetXtreme II 10 GigE #71
Image SRAM Addr NVM Offset Byte Cnt CPU Version
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
BC1 0x08000040 0x00000B14 0x00003F9C MCP BC1 6.2.25
BC2 0x08007800 0x00004AB0 0x000157AC MCP BC2 6.2.25
MBA 0x00000000 0x0001A25C 0x0004B004 HOSTPCI30_CLP MBA 7.2.29
EFI x64 7.4.19
L2T 0x001C0000 0x00075898 0x000021A4 TSTORM L2T 7.0.0
L2C 0x00240000 0x00077A3C 0x00000974 CSTORM L2C 7.0.0
L2X 0x002C0000 0x000783B0 0x00002444 XSTORM L2X 7.0.0
L2U 0x00340000 0x0007A7F4 0x00001974 USTORM L2U 7.0.0
MODULES_PN 0x00000000 0x0007C168 0x00000124 HOST Rev 1
ISCSI_B 0x08000010 0x00065260 0x0000F638 HOST ipv4_ipv6 v7.4.2
I_B_CFG 0x08000010 0x00074898 0x00000800 HOST v2.0
I_B_CFG2 0x08000010 0x00075098 0x00000800 HOST v2.0
CFG_SHARED 0x08000010 0x00000AF4 0x00000020 MCP N/A

Excellent first post. Welcome.

Dragonbrain? Lizardbrain?
DragonHeaded?
Smart as a dragon?

Edit: Dragon's Head