SGI: Hardware

Hello, Ive had an interest in sgi machenes for a while now and I finally managed to get an sgi octane. It appears to all be here, aside from the hard drive being loose and not having the sleds. Its got a sticker on saying its been wiped.
I cant any video from it though. Upon presssing the power button the fans spin up, but thats all i can get. Any suggestions or trubleshooting tips?

Thanks.

i guess you mean graphics output.
how did you connect what kind of monitor?

Yeah, graphics output. I am not familiar with the connector on the octane, never seen it before. It came with an adapter that has a vga connector on it, im using that, connected to a VGA monitor.

Picture of connector / adapter.

http://postimage.org/gallery/3voqavei/

Does the light on the front work and what color is it? I recently bought an Octane and when it arrived it would not boot or provide and output via the graphics card or the serial port. It had a solid red light. I pulled the graphics card (along with the mouse and keyboard) and then I could access it via the first serial port using a null modem cable. From there I knew it was related to the graphics card and upon close inspection the one of the TRAM chips was loose from shipping. Plugged it fully in and everything worked as it should. Before isolating the problem to the card, I reseated everything I could, the CPU, RAM, system board, drive, XO cards. You might need to try the same.

The adapter for the graphics card requires a monitor that suports sync on greeen SOG. You might need to check that you monitor supports that.

I'm not getting a light on the front. I'm unfamiliar with the hardware, attached is a link to a picture of the video Card. There are 5 empty sockets on it, im not sure if there is something missing or if those are just optional ports for some other expansion.

Im just using a fairly modern Dell flatscreen monitor, ill give it a shot with an older multi synch monitor ive got in storage in a while. Ill also try the serial console and see if I can get any more useful info, thanks for the help.

http://postimage.org/image/47vm0xq21/

I'm new to SGI as well. I just got my Octane a week ago. Do you hear the drive spin up? One thing you could check is the LEDs on the front. If you pull the front cover there are LEDs in the lower right side, there meaning is described in other posts, but there are a few that should be lit. Assuming that is all correct then I would probably use a serial console to check the power on diagnostics.

The drive does not spin up. Some of the lights on the front do light up. Im in the process of putting it back together, I had a bit of a fight getting it apart. The top clamp to the cpu board wouldn't open all the way locking the board inside.
Looks like someone was nice enough to bend all the screws as well, had to drill one of them out. Ill post a picture of the diagnostic lights. Im still trying to find my null modem cable to get into the serial console. Thanks.

Diagnostic lights :
http://postimage.org/image/ros2dg10p/

You find the lights described here: http://www.nekochan.net/wiki/Octane#Front_plane_LEDs . I'm a bit concerned that the heart light is not on. Sounds like something with the system board or the backplane to me. My screws were all bent like yours, not bad enough that I had to drill them out though. I would try re-seating the memory and cpu on the system board and inspecting the connections from the system board to the backplane. I would also visually inspect both the system board and the backplane. Hopefully someone more experienced will chime in here, your at the end of my experience in diagnosing.

The pair of sockets side-by-side are for optional TRAM (texture RAM) on the graphics board. The other group of three sockets lined up together are for ribbon cables to an optional video card. (In the SGI world the difference between "graphics" and "video" is important as foetz alluded to above.) So nothing is missing. You should have a fully functional base graphics board.

Now, for your main inquiry:

As jchamberlain suggests, it is very troubling that the Heart LED isn't lighting up as it should. It's equally bad that you're not seeing a red LED on the outside of the machine immediately upon powering up the machine (while power-on diagnostics are happening). Both of those facts suggest the problem is not with the graphics output or the connection to the monitor. I'd even be willing to bet that you won't see anything on a serial console, as it seems to be failing very early in the boot process.

The difficulties you had with the top clamp on the motherboard suggest physical damage to the motherboad, the frontplane or the connection between the two. Somewhere on this site you can find documentation on how to remove the frontplane and inspect the connections. I'm sure the search feature will help you find it. That's where I started when my Octane was giving me troubles (although your problems are more severe than mine were). Sorry I can't be more specific at the moment; but that's where I'd start looking before worrying about Sync-on-Green monitors or anything like that.

I took it apart, and reseated everything. Cpu, memory, the main cpu board, video card and power supply. Still nothing but the fan runs. Should the fan on the power supply be going too? It doesnt spin. I hooked up a null modem cable and fired it up and got nothing. I dont really know what to do beyond just buying replacement parts at random, which is out of my budget at the moment.

A friend of mine said he said he spotted another octane jsut like mine in one of the local college storage closets, perhaps if i can get my hands on that one i can swap some parts out to find where the problem is with mine.

I will take a further look around here and inspect the connectors on the motherboard, thank you for the help.

Mr Bill ... you don't have a video card. You have a graphics card. In an Octane, they are not the same.

Sounds like you have a bad power supply; its fan should spin up the instant you push the power button. You should take the shroud off it and look for charred bits...

I took a look inside the power supply and it all looks good, no burnt parts or bulging capacitors.

the pins on the backpane are bent beyond repair. I attempted to straighten them but some broke off, so im going to need a new backpane.

Saw your post in the 'Wanted' forum for a replacement frontplane. Like lots of other hardware, the Octane frontplane has gone through several revisions. The most notable change was to the Xbow ASIC. The last released was Xbow ASIC: Revision 1.4, and a rev 1.4 Xbow is a required for some of the more popular upgrades to (other) later generation Octane hardware

The SGI part number for the frontplane is 030-0891-00x, followed by a revision letter. Those with the revision 1.4 Xbow ASIC will have part number 030-0891-003 revision F or higher (for example, 030-0891-003 rev F, 030-0891-003 rev G, or 030-0891-003 rev H).

The very handy Octane Workstation Owner's Guide is available on-line - it includes a section on Removing and Installing the Frontplane Module .

BTW, if you plan to reuse the same system module (the module with processor(s) and memory), I'd suggest examining the connectors on the system module (that mated with the damaged pins on the frontplane) to make sure none of the pin receptacles were deformed or damaged.