Alex McLintock ([info]alexmc) wrote,
@ 2009-06-30 10:05:00
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Entry tags:tech

Tech: Hardware: Steptoe and Sons
I sometimes think of myself as a rag and bone man of the technology world. I have a server system made available to me and I've wasted several hours trying to get it working. I am assured it *was* working. It comes with 2 Opteron CPUs, 4Gb memory, and is already in a nice big dekstop case.

1) I'm on my third power supply. The first did nothing at all (so I binned it). The problem is that it needed extra connectors as a server board rather than a consumer board - 24pin power plus an eight bin connector. Most normal ATX nowadays have 24+6, but all the ATX I had were just 20+4. Dont you love standards which change all the time. I dont want to have to worry about ATX version 2.2 being different from ATX 2.0 or whatever.

2) I managed to get a BIOS screen come up once. ONCE. ARGH. This kept me interested. If I hadnt got it at all then I would have assumed it was really dead.

3) It has an LED display which shows two characters as it goes through different phases of booting. It is currently aborting at "44". This took a lot of hunting down as it isnt a common fault. If it said "This machine is buggered" then I would have stopped. Instead I look at a document like this and it doesnt mention code 44 at all. Argh. I eventually found one which suggested it might be internal memory at fault. I'm thinking that I might need to reflash the BIOS. but then how can I do that if it wont boot to bios.

4) I could have just effin bought a new server in the time I wasted on this old one. Being green is all very well and I am trying to save kit from going in to land fill but it is hard.




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[info]dougs
2009-06-30 09:29 am UTC (link)
There is an argument about power consumption on new hardware being much less than on old hardware, and whether this offsents the scrappage of the old kit.

And you also have to consider that wrestling with kit which is reluctant to cooperate is supposed to be fun.

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[info]alexmc
2009-06-30 09:37 am UTC (link)
> wrestling with kit which is reluctant to cooperate is supposed to be fun.

I must get some satisfaction out of it otherwise I wouldnt do it.

I start off with the assumption that the problem is repeatable and I have some chance of figuring it out in a Sherlock Holmes style.

To some extent this is my "Sudoku" - and it is just as pointless.

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[info]jon_a_five
2009-06-30 09:54 am UTC (link)
Vic's new gaming rig still uses her old PSU and generates far less heat from using less power. But I'm a fan of using old hardwre wherever possible. We work in an industry that lives off people feeling forced to upgrade from perfectly servicable hardware and software.

If it's a memory issue how many stick do you have in there? Try booting with one stick at a time just in case one's a duffer.

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[info]dougs
2009-06-30 10:17 am UTC (link)
On my current crop of old servers (two Dell PowerEdge 1650 1U servers from November 2002), I'm having fun with memory.

They each came with two 256MB PCI133 ECC SDRAM sticks, and the motherboard insists that it runs with them in pairs -- so I can have two in these two slots, or two in those two slots, or four filling up all four slots (and leave the other server empty).

Here's the thing: with two sticks in, Memtest86+ tells me there's a fault at 511.8MB -- with four sticks in, at 1023.6MB -- whichever sticks I use, in whichever slots, on whichever motherboard. Which is odd.

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[info]alexmc
2009-06-30 10:44 am UTC (link)
I wish I could get to the stage where I could run Memtest86+ (It comes on all Ubuntu CDs nowadays)


And yes - I have reduced the number of sticks as a test. I dont mean it is that sort of memory...

This is what I found yesterday.

http://msevm.com/data/ami.pdf

44h Interrupts enabled if the diagnostics switch is on. Initializing data to check memory wraparound at 0:0 next.

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