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Re: Proliant 1600 upgrade 1x550 to 2x550 PIII failure - Help?!

 
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John T.
Occasional Contributor

Proliant 1600 upgrade 1x550 to 2x550 PIII failure - Help?!

Hello there...

I'm going through some older hardware no longer in production use, putting together machines for simple applications as the needs arise, and I've come across a tower 1600 which had a single P3 550 in it. I have a rackmount 3000 which had dual 500's in it.

I verified the 1600 booted ok prior to any work, I removed the 550 and installed the two 500's. I made the switch to the DIP switch on the mainboard.

Upon powerup I get a screen flicker, the keyboard lights blink, and thats it.

It may be helpful to know that on my first attempt, I neglected to install a PPM (330638-001 spare number 329267-001). The first time it DID boot correctly, and indicated It did not have a properly working PPM for processor 2. However it did recognize and startup using the first 500. I removed power and installed the second PPM. Since then, I get the display results above.

I've swapped out PPM's (I have one spare, and one of them was known working before all this), I've swapped them into different spots. I've verified the processors match, I've swapped processors to different slots, and even went as far as to remove the RAM, and try to power up with one process and PPM, and then interchanged the mix, looking for a working combination.

As stated, I don't get any video, no compaq proliant splash screen, so the utilities i believe are out of the question. I'm wondering if a NVRAM clear wouldn't be helpful, however I haven't been able to locate documentation on exactly how to do that yet.

Any recommendations? Anyone?
7 REPLIES 7
Stephen Kebbell
Honored Contributor

Re: Proliant 1600 upgrade 1x550 to 2x550 PIII failure - Help?!

Hi John,

to clear NVRAM, set DIP switch 6 on SW1 (on the I/O Board) to ON, power on for 30 seconds and power off again. Then put the switch back to off. (the exact location of SW1 should be on a sticker on the inside of one of the covers)
But I would first try reseating your Processor board/cage. Check all connections to the small Backplane board (where the Processor and I/O Board are plugged in), especially the connection from the power supply.

Good luck.

Stephen
Chris Flynn_1
Frequent Advisor
Solution

Re: Proliant 1600 upgrade 1x550 to 2x550 PIII failure - Help?!

Hi John,
If you reinstall the 550 processor does the server still show the problem or does it function ok.

If it works ok then only fit one of the 500 processors (remembering to change the switch settings for the processor speed) and run smart start to reconfigure the server.

Also I recently upgraded a proliant 1600 from a single piii 500 to dual piii 600. When I was doing this upgrade I had to chnage the I/O board as there are three different versions for the proliant 1600, One for upto and including piii 500, one for piii 550 and one for piii 600.

If the server works when you reinstall the 550 then it maybe that you need to chnage this board.

Regards,
Chris
Chris Flynn_1
Frequent Advisor

Re: Proliant 1600 upgrade 1x550 to 2x550 PIII failure - Help?!

Hi John,

You may also find this thread useful

http://forums1.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/parseCurl.do?CURL=/cm/QuestionAnswer/1,,0x53579c196a4bd71190080090279cd0f9,00.html&admit=716493758+1068232899568+28353475

This gives you the switch settings on the CPU Board for the differnet cpu's

Regards,
Chris
John T.
Occasional Contributor

Re: Proliant 1600 upgrade 1x550 to 2x550 PIII failure - Help?!

Well, here's my current status as I'm finishing up my shift.

I checked the I/O Board and backplane connections and for the sake of it, ran some air through the Mainboard and I/O board connectors to ensure all was clean. No change as is.

I removed both 500's, and reinstalled the 550 (and changed sw1 options as well). No change in result.

-- This indicates to me that something has failed hardware wise, however to begin narrowing the location....

I swapped the processor cage with a known good one containing a single 550. It booted normally. I then swapped my processors over to the known good cage, same result. I swapped the 550 originally from the known good cage into my original cage, server would not boot.

What I'm seemingly coming to believe is that I may have 3 failed processors. Interestingly, when I began all this, I was able to get the original 550 to boot, I was able to get the first 500 to boot when I forgot to install the PPM. Since then, none of those three processors have worked. However when I swapped cages with a currently running 550, it ran just fine.

I'm a bit baffled, but I've been at it for over 12 hours, time to go home.

Feel free to post any thoughts or comments on this. I'll be back at it again in a day or two (as time permits) and will update this thread as I get news.

Thanks to both of you for your input and assistance.


note - Any chance either of you know the max RAM limit for the P3-550 iteration of the 1600? Before I got into processor swapping trouble, it took 1gb fine, however I have another 1gb of matching ram that I can fit in it, if it'll take it. But have yet to come across a document referring to the max RAM limit for the p3 series of this machine.
John T.
Occasional Contributor

Re: Proliant 1600 upgrade 1x550 to 2x550 PIII failure - Help?!

I thought of one more possibility...

Is it possible that a ROM update is necessary? I.e. in its current state I can't do anything, however it has been booting with the whole mainboard cage of another working 1600 (with a p350). Should I boot it under that and use the smartstart to update the ROM to the latest available? Think its worth the trouble to try?
Chris Flynn_1
Frequent Advisor

Re: Proliant 1600 upgrade 1x550 to 2x550 PIII failure - Help?!

John,

Just a thought

Have you tried using the processor and the ppm module form the good cage you know is working in the bad cage and fit this to the other server you removed the good cage from. If the fault follows the cage this could mean that the processor board in the cage is faulty.

Regards,
Chris

John T.
Occasional Contributor

Re: Proliant 1600 upgrade 1x550 to 2x550 PIII failure - Help?!

Chris,

I followed your suggestions, which I had done partially in the past, this time I followed through step by step.

I swapped cages, yet kept the processors and PPM's native to the servers, and the problem did not move, proving the problem was in the processor and/or ppm.

I then used another system to create a dual P3-550, versus the 500's. As per previous query on the I/O board version. As it turns out, it appears the I/O board in the problem server will only support the 550mhz processor and would need to be upgraded.

So overall I moved the equipment around, and got the server running with 2 P3-550's, and two other single cpu server's used to have 550's, now have 500's. No big loss.

Nonetheless... thanks to all who responded.