Hi there, So my company had 6 of these Rackable Systems Dual Opteron machines (Arima HDAMA Motherboard) running in a Rackable Systems rack with the shared power supply, etc. -- they all ran well for a year or two. After refactoring our lab, we removed the Rackable Systems rack and purchased standard rack kits and power supplies for these machines (power supplies are 456Watt #AHF5DC456W). They all converted fine, and all ran fine for a couple of months. Then, a couple of days apart, two of them died. When you switch on the power supply, the fans kick on for a second, then shut off; and the front LCD panel lights up. Green "LED 9" on the motherboard lights up for the second that the fans kick on, and Green "LED 10" remains lit while the machine is 'soft-powered' (with the manual switch on the power supply). Neither of these LED's appear to be documented in the motherboard manual. When you press the power button on the front panel, nothing happens. I've tried a new power supply and get the exact same behavior. I'm not convinced these machines are dead and would really like to revive them. My Internet searching has led me here -- it looks like a lot of people on this forum have bought and tinkered with these systems, but I haven't found anything on my specific problem. Any help/ideas for troubleshooting is greatly appreciated. And if I've left out pertinent details, I'll be happy to provide them ASAP. Thanks Scott
I've seen a few rack systems that got mounted somewhere else, inadvertently covered the fan outlets resulting in no airflow and extreme overheating. The end result wasn't pretty.
Thanks for replying... Is there a way I can determine if this is what happened? There is no visual damage that I can see, no POST beeps, etc. -- These machines are too nice to just throw away without proving they are truly dead.
Just by looking I guess. The ones I dealt with were quite obvious, upon examination of the rack mount hardware discovered it had covered the fan holes. Other than that you're down to standard troubleshooting procedures, swap in/out with parts from a known working one till you narrow it down.
Have you checked the caps? Have you checked the capacitors? Crack them open, and See if there's residue on the top or sides, if they're bulging, or even if they (literally) blew off the board and into the case. I've seen all three.
Hey I made some progress! I tried pulling the CPU's: 1. Remove only CPU 0 and it powers up 2. Remove only CPU 1 and it does not power up 3. Remove both CPU's and it powers up 4. Use the known good CPU (from #2 above) in socket 0 and it does not power up 5. Move CPU originally in Socket 0 to Socket 1 and leave socket 0 empty and it powers up Now by powering up, I mean the fans keep running and the power light comes on -- no system beeps or video output. I am (and have been) able to access the "Serial Roamer" board but any commands I send to power the machine on or off seem to be ignored. I'm guessing its not going to get to POST until I can get it to come up with a CPU in Socket 0...
Hey there. How are you making out with your 2 rackables? I recently bought an Arima Hdama board with a couple of Opteron 275 in it and I can't power it up either. Read your posts and I will try mine tomorrow and see if I can get it to power on. When I plug in my supply and power it up, the Intrusion LED on the board comes on and stays lit, but when I push the power on button the main power led on the board flashes momentarily and then shuts off. Tried to jumper the two headres for the Intrusion circuit but no success. Did not get any fans to come on when I tried to power up. I'll try your handy-work tomorrow and let you know.