SGI: Hardware

Greetings;

I pulled my R3k Indigo Eland out of storage recently and apparently it has suffered from bitrot. The machine worked when I put it up, around eight years ago, but now it won't power on. Initially the orange LED would simply blink constantly on power on without turning green. I pulled the CPU and graphics board and reseated the RAM and gently pushed on socketed chips (while grounded).

Now, when I power on the machine, the LED goes immediately to green and stays green. I hear no startup chime. I've checked +5v and +12v on the drive socket and the voltage is steady with no obvious ripple. I don't see anything appear on the serial terminal at all. I've left it running for ~3 minutes and not seen any hint of video coming up. When I power off the machine I get a curious squelch noise from the speaker, which I don't recall ever getting before... but it does suggest the speaker itself isn't blown out and holding 'back' the chime.

The Indigo Field Manual doesn't quite describe this issue - it expects it to either not come to green, or to green with chime and carry on - there doesn't seem to be a middle ground.

I don't suppose someone could throw a suggestion my way?

Thanks;

- JP

Connect a terminal to serial #1 and see what it says.

If the battery went dead (which isn't unlikely), the NVRAM is invalid and the console reset to 'd' (serial port).
You'll need a new battery to get past the 'TOD clock invalid , initializing TOD...' messages.

As above, I don't see anything on the serial console ever show up, alas.

- JP

SGI startup sequence starts with a green LED until the processor sets it to yellow (at the start of the diags). A immediate-and-always-green LED is a Bad Sign. Try reseating the processor module and swapping RAM around to get different sticks in bank 0.

My Indigo didn't even give a peep out of the serial port until I repalced the battery.

I tried reseating chips and fiddled with the RAM positions, even removing all of the sticks. Green on power-on, no complaints even when missing all RAM.

Given it gave me an orange light when I tried it last weekend, before initially reseating things, I'm definitely worried I've zapped something.

I've also verified there's no voltage coming out of the battery on the CPU board, but I have a hard time believe that not having a working battery causes it to fail to go into its POST (especially since there's lots of posts saying it gives tod errors on serial, which you wouldn't get it if it hadn't gone past the POST in the first place).

Most irritating. Anyone got a spare Indigo CPU board?

- JP

It should post without the battery, and complain about the wrong TOD, then stop. Just an idea: check the memory slots for shorts. I once damaged a slot on the O2 by removing the memory - the contacts in the slots were damaged in the process (they stuck to the memory stick(?)). Had to install a small piece of cardboard in the slot to remove the contact.

I will again strongly encourage you to give up AFTER you try a new battery. I seem to be the only guy who had a totally dead R3K Indigo until the battery was replaced.

I just had similar issues with my indigo/r3k. When I first got it, I needed to reseat the cpu board (solid green light), only to discover that it needed a new battery. Changed the battery - solid green light. Reseated the cpu board - solid green light. Pulled new battery out - booted. Put battery back in - finally all good!

Alrighty, it's not like it'll be a major investment, I'll give it a whirl.

I see mention of possibly using a CR2032, which is a 3.0v battery - but the installed battery is 3.7v. Is the 3.0v sufficient?

- JP

my old cr2032 (read 2.5v) works fine.

There's a few creative ways to attach a CR2032 to the Indigo using the battery holder either purchased new or salvaged off a PC motherboard.

No soap, no changes at all in behaviour with a good battery source. Quite sure I killed it.

Thank you, again, to everyone who suggested things.

- JP