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Just rolled this beauty into the shop and thought I'd start a new thread to share the adventure. I hope to have it ready for it's first power-up today.

Dual or quad cpu?


That’s an expensive monster of a machine. Then and today.

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It's alive! Made some progress...

Looks like the memory checks out too...

Now to figure out the state of the RAID.

I'd be happy to sell it, I've got no idea what they are going for now, if it's something you're truly interested in pm me an offer, I'm never offended ;o)
atm I just want to know it's in decent condition so I'm not passing on a night-marish POS.

P.S. - it's a heavy bugger, about 70 lbs...

Click on profile, then click the email if it’s public you can contact

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I think he forgets we're just the little people with no permissions. Lol!

You're amazing Lostinlodos! We appreciate you.

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Here to learn more so I can recycle more
My grades are my own opinion and not an official grade from Boardsort

Sure, I'm willing to package it up and ship it if you're up for the shipping cost. I'm not sure what method would be best, probably some sort of ground? You all have far more experience with shipping I'm sure.

I'll check on the CPU(s) today, I know it has at least one if that's helpful :D . The challenge atm is to get a driver for the RAID controller, that was the bigger obstacle I was coming up against yesterday.
Type: IBM SCSI-2 Fast/Wide Streaming-RAID Adapter/A
FWver: 2.21
I even tried a WinNT Small BackOffice Server install but it really wants the support for the SCSI and RAID in first...


P.S. - I was reading the posts on the PM situation, how frustrating when useful tools get abused. I'm wondering if there's a way to start a "Trusted/Privileged" group that a member can be added to just to add that ability, or have private conversation just within that group?

Oh. I thought the little profile icon showed up at the bottom left of the post for the user. Sorry.

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there are several in my area, not sure if it will make a difference: 59101, 59102, 59106, 59044

Well an update...

I finally got a copy of the SCSI/RAID controller drivers (IBM only allows sftp connections now and I never could get it to authenticate with my credentials.. ardent-tool.com is the bomb!) and got the RAID configuration utility to come up. It showed the RAID-5 in good health but the install was corrupt so it still wasn't booting. Then shortly after it suddenly just powered off, not shutdown, just off. This has "shutting-off" has continued, but shutting down even quicker (like a failing component).

I cleaned/checked the PSU and there doesn't seem to be any apparent issue, caps all visually look good and as the power levels are dead on and the front power indicator lights all show power is good I decided not to pull the pcb's and go further with testing the caps for now.

There seems to be some indication that the memory board isn't working correctly. I removed/cleaned/re-seated everything but no change. When first powered on the led at the end of the memory board socket on the main board comes on for 1-2 sec's then dimly flashes twice then stays off. This behavior is the same with the board in the second memory board socket also.

I've re-seated everything multiple times, alternately removed drives etc and nothing seems to get me past POST now. The main board appears to have been re-cap'd before I got it but it looks like decent work was done. The strange thing is the first day I started it up it ran all day, like 6-7 hours straight with zero issues (of this type). Then after pulling the boards for cleaning and inspection yesterday this problem began.

I'm inclined to think that the movement to these old dry boards must have lifted a pad somewhere or created a cold solder joint. I spent the past 1.5 hours with the boards under my microscope camera but the problem hasn't changed.

So sorry to say, it is not a functioning machine atm and I don't have any more time to give it until probably next fall (I have an annual farmers type schedule). I just wanted to update and not leave you hanging on this one.

Just break it up so it can’t be picked up by scanners and spiders
Name residing at location

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Ok, so I couldn't leave it alone. I had to at least know if it was the system or PSU, soooo I made a custom adapter that allows for a regular ATX PSU to be used on it.


Before when I back-probed the Power_Good pin on the original PSU it was always below 0.4V. With this setup it ranges between 3.5V - 5V but pretty stable at 4.860V AND it's been running for 3.5 hours now w/o crashing a single time!!!

So. It's the PSU.

Pretty sure it will be either a cap or voltage regulator. As far as I can tell there's nothing wrong with any of the other hardware, I'm re-sync'ing the RAID-5 now to see if it's recoverable, if not I'll wipe it and start fresh, probably with WinNT.