[rescue] Catatonia in the SGI Indigo2

[Corda Albert J DLVA]

I'd second the suggestions below.  I have a number of
indigo2 systems, and have run into problems like this
before. My general approach is:

1) Take the system completely apart,
   i.e.  Remove:
                Peripherals (disks, CDROM)
                Power supply
                CPU Module
		    I/O boards
		    Riser Card
		    SIMMS

2) Thoroughly vacuum the system out (be especially
careful of static discharge when doing this, especially
in winter!). I have a static-safe computer-room vac that
I picked up for virtually nothing at a local (non-hamfest)
fleamarket.

3) check connectors for corrosion, dust, etc.
   and CAREFULLY re-seat everything.

4) I had one system which, after the above procedure, still
   died occasionally. I replaced all the SIMMS (72 Pin parity SIMMS
   aren't that difficult to find.) This seemed to fix the problem.

Note:
   SGI used to make a big stink about using gold-plated
   SIMMS in the Indigo2.  Over a long period of time, tin-plated
   SIMMS will adversely react (according to SGI) with the
   SIMM sockets used in the Indigo2. 

Good Luck!!!


-----Original Message-----
From: Sheldon T. Hall [mailto:shel at cmhcsys.com]
Sent: Friday, January 16, 2004 2:57 PM
To: The Rescue List
Subject: RE: [rescue] Catatonia in the SGI Indigo2


Sheldon T. Hall wrote ...

> That's two votes for checking the cooling, so I'll do that.

All fans are running, there was not an excessive amount of dust.  There's
_no_ dust now, as I've blown it all out.

> I'm also going to try the same activities, but without running Distributed
> Folding at the same time.

In addition to stopping DF, I closed a few other apps, then tried to burn
another CD.  The machine died in the same way as before, i.e. monitor dark,
no reaction to anything.  The light on the front of the system was green,
though.  Sometimes when it has failed, the light had been yellow, but this
has not been consistent.

Has anyone any better ideas than ...

Take the machine to bits and reseat everything.
Try burning again.
Take out the 10baseT card, autoconfigure.
Try again.
Put these system disks in another, similar I^2.
Etc.

Thanks.

-Shel