LH3 Netserver lockup and memory parity error

[William Harrington_1]

There is not an actual stop code, the entire message is:
Hardware Malfunction
Callyour Hardware vendor for support
NMI: Parity Check / memory parity error
The system has halted.


At that point it requires a physical power button shutdown and restart. It is very consistant if a NIC is installed that it likes, it doesn't care for the 3COM905 B or C at all.

I've now removed the cards and leaving it powered on wait for the system board to arrive. I've cinvinced myself that the board has just lost the NIC track, we'll know in about 10 days.

Thanks,
Bill

[Exeter17]

William

Can you pull the NICs out and try a basic Intel 82557? I have an HP branded one here - pay for shipping and I'll send it to you (it came out of my LH3)



If you are runnning the embedded NR try firmware AND check the lil EDO PARITY SIMM in the back of the box. I had the SIMM go bad and my RIAD performance went to heck after that.

[William Harrington_1]

Thanks for the offer on the NIC, will keep it in mind.
I have swapped that small memory card that is located on the upper left corner if the I/O system board between the two LH3's I have and it had no impact.
Not at work now so can not verify it was called a simm but I don't think there are any other small replaceable items that I have not swapped.
Since I have one machine in semi active service I pick and choose my time and parts to swap.

[William Harrington_1]

exeter17...if you would e-mail at the address in my profile I would like to take you up on the offer of the NIC.

[Paris Finley]

WH:
Side note: We have recently come up with the same error (excactly) and symptoms (exactly) on a completely different server configuration, make and model. We think it may be related to a backup tape device managed with Backup Exec (v. 9) that is starting to fail. We see no correlation with the network card yet. I will update you here.--Paris Finley, infosysmgr, Daily Hampshire Gazette

[William Harrington_1]

Thanks for the comment:

This week I received and installed the power share board. This means I've replaced the I/O system board, the system board power share board, one drive cage and controller and the power supplies. If there is not NIC activity the machine runs fine and can handle some light NIC load but during heavy file transfer it still gives the blue screen parity error. I admit these were not new parts and it is possible that these boards have the same problem so I am now planning on swapping parts between the good server and the bad server.
Coincidentaly our first inkling that some was wrong with this server was when the DLT backups started running slow but this was across the network from a UNIX box. It finally lost contact with the DLT and I have not even tried to reinstall the DLT.

This is a project that I will continue to chip away at. Unfortunately we are now putting loads on the other server so I have to pick and choose the best time to swap parts.

[William Harrington_1]

My last comment wasn't true. I had two types of errors occuring and assumed they were the same. One was the parity error and one was a freeze up.
Sometimes during the file transfers across the network the machine would freeze, sometimes it would give the parity error.

After replacing the power share board the blue screen parity error did stop however the freeze would still occur, I thought at first that I just happened to hit the freeze and not the parity error but then realized the parity error was not coming back.

This week I pulled the video card and went back to the on board video and the freeze up stopped.

I have subsequently added a Diamond Viper V330 card from an old U-Max PC because the on-board does not give 24bit color resolution and the freeze up has not reoccurred and I've gone back to a Intel pro server NIC card.

Based on the events I recorded it seems that both the I/O board and Power share board were faulty.

I think the problems are cured, but the reality is that very little of the original server is still in place.

Thanks to all, I be closing this thread after the first of the year.

[William Harrington_1]

The LH3 Netserver is running normally and stable. Please see my earlier comment