[rescue] E450 Chassis differences.

[Earl D. Baugh Jr.]

>> Since I am on the topic of chassis, I would remind folks that the AA
>> chassis did
>> not support all of the expansion that the BA and CA did.  When we
>> were looking for another
>> E450 at my old work  ( as a hot backup) and found a bunch of 450's
>> that at the time were cheap,
>> and almost purchased one until I got some info from a Sun reseller
>> that I've worked with who
>> clued me in that they were cheap because they were AA's....
>
> I'm curious about the chassis designations... isn't the system board
> part number more deterministic of the expansion capability than the
> chassis? Or is the assumption here that certain chassis types only
> carried certain system board revisions (and perhaps extra disk
> backplane expansions)?
>
> The reason I bring this up is because during the course of service, I
> can say firsthand that zero regard is ever paid to these AA/BA/CA
> designations. This would seem somewhat like reading the "SvCd"
> markings on the outside edge of a SS5 chassis and assuming the specs
> within are correct (i.e., the board was never replaced/upgraded)
> without examining the contents.
>
> Just a thought... maybe I'm missing something here.

Well, actually there were some differences, and I took a few minutes to
dig it up (wanted to make sure I didn't say 450 when I meant 480  
again 8-) )

I believe the differences were in parts that you probably "could" get  
somehow
and change, but not necessarily easy ones.  (For example, like the E220R
and E420R are basically the same chassis, however, the way and parts you
use to mount the boards are VERY different, and the back plate is  
different...
not  parts you could "buy" but ones that you could pull from surplus/ 
scrapped
boxes...I know my 220R is in what was originally a 420R chassis, and my
420R is in what was originally a 220R chassis... yes, a lot of extra  
work I could
have avoided had I built them in the opposite order 8-) )

For the E450, here's one example from the Sun Docs (BTW, all indented  
quotes
are from the E450 manuals, most especially the upgrade docs...) :

	The upper blower assembly (part number 540-3023) is present in certain
	Ultra Enterprise 450 configurations only.

And from the upgrade docs:

	Any Ultra Enterprise 450 server configured with a chassis numbered  
5402833-04 or
	lower, with an upgraded main logic board or with new 400-MHz, 4-Mbyte
	Ultra SPARC II CPU modules with a part number of 501-5239-04 or  
higher, meets the
	Class A system requirements for EMI, but not the Class B requirements

 From what the vendor told us, if we went with 400 or 480's we'd  
needed to confirm what
chassis we had.  I suspect heat and EMI were a couple of the issues  
(i.e. the blower was
probably to cool the CPU's...)  and of course the main board.

	The 480-MHz CPU modules require an air guide for proper cooling.  
This air guide is
	shipped with the 501-5673 main logic board.

I know for a fact that the original system boards in the AA chassis  
couldn't support the 480 CPUs
(The product docs for the E450 indicate that you have to check the  
system board level to know
...the docs say it needs to be a 501-5673 for them to work...)

For some reason I seem to recall that there was an issue with  
installing all of the backplanes
(to allow for the maximum # of drives) with the AA chassis as well.   
I did some looking, but
can't find a ref to that in the docs.  I can check with the vendor (I  
still chat with him) to see if
I could find out the details if anybody is interested.

So, at least some things to watch for...and be aware of (I'd hate to  
see someone get one up
and going with 480's and melt down a CPU because they didn't have a  
$2 air guide in place...)

Earl