PDHC on a PA RISC system cellboard

[M.A.Jones]

Hello,

I've had quite an issue with a 7420, which turned out to be due to a faulty PFHC on the cellboard. This only showed when we had to shut the system down and tried to restart it.

The cause of this, if I udnerstood it correctly, is usually due to a powerpeak or firmware upgrades. Since we did not do any firmware upgrade, the power peak is the only option left. Altho I do not know of any power issues in the datacenter, I would like to check other systems if their PDHC is functioning correctly.

Is there any way I can check these without having to hardboot the system end seeing it not start up again?

Thanks,

[Keith Bryson]

I would have thought that any A/C overvolt/undervolt would be reported in the MP log. Get onto the MP and do SL to see the MP logs.

Keith

[M.A.Jones]

small correction...PFHC is a typo, should be PDHC baturally

[Torsten.]

PDHC is firmware, more or less.

What kind of messages did you receive? VRM related?

[M.A.Jones]

Start of it was the system crashing with a panic, and only returning with 1 of the 2 cellboards. After replacing loads of parts we finally got it working, testing afterwards showed the PDHC which holds the firmware versions and is only used when hard booting a system, to be broken.
during the search for the borken part, we never got any clue that it could be the PDHC that was broken, still only guessing it was broken before the VRM caused the system to panic.

My only concern now is that I do not know how to check my other systems for a possible faulty PDHC without having to shut it down completely first.

[Torsten.]

A part can fail.

All PDHC related part are on the daughter board. Even this board or a VRM can fail and bring the server down.

Check with PS and DE command.

[Robert_Jewell]

There isn't any real way to fully test firmware without really using it. However you can run a command to report what revision the firmware is listed at. If this report shows an invalid version (such as 0.00) then you definitely know there is a problem.

Access the MP Command Menu and run SYSREV to report the versions on each of the components.

The PS and DE commands will also report particular firmware revisions.

-Bob

[M.A.Jones]

thanks for the tips all