The haunted slot - DL585 G2 / P400

[Brent_Quick]

When I took over managing some servers, I noticed that there was a blanking slot in one port of the eight slot SAS on board array.  When asked why I was told any drive placed in that slot would go PFA shortly after.  I took it to be a bad backplane, or controller or connector cable, or similar physical versus metaphysical cause.  Now I am a beliver.  We had a spare (parts) 585 G2 so I basically replaced everything.  Moved a new memory/cpu/drive cartridge, replaced backplane, used different cables, and a different controller (had been P800 before but is P400 now).  Base chassis stayed in rack so the physical drive box stayed.  PFA cause is due to "Other Timeouts".

Help me either understand how it happens or get me that short lady from Poltergeist!