SGI: Hardware

I plugged a CRT into my o2, got nothing, plugged in a newer CRT got a green screen, plugged in a lcd, got nothing, plugged in a special SGI monitor got nothing. I did hear a tune when you boot up though.

Later I opened it up moved stuff around, looked at parts, closed it back up, botted, got no tune, and now a orange light is on in the front, it wont go away!

What do I do?

I hope you unplugged it before removing anything.

with that said.
A)Hook up a serial cable to port 1 and run an xterminal on another machine to see if you get any output at all.

B) There is a small hole next to the on button. Try poking a paperclip in there to reset it.

C) Power it up. When you only get the amber light, Yank the plug out and put it back in (Seriously).

D) Unplug the system, remove the motherboard. Next to the Dallas time keeper chip there is a jumper, put the jumper so it covers both pins. Reassemble the O2 and plug it in. Power up. Yank the plug (as it won't power down) and move the jumper back to where it was. Reassemble the unit and power up again.

If you're ripping everything apart, make sure the dimms are properly seated and the CPU as well.

zafunk wrote: D) Unplug the system, remove the motherboard. Next to the Dallas time keeper chip there is a jumper, put the jumper so it covers both pins. Reassemble the O2 and plug it in. Power up. Yank the plug (as it won't power down) and move the jumper back to where it was. Reassemble the unit and power up again.

Normally the power on jumper is only necessary if the power supply isn't powering up the system at all. With the amber light lit we're obviously getting power I'd say it's more likely something is loose or perhaps a problem with the installed RAM.

nekonoko wrote: Normally the power on jumper is only necessary if the power supply isn't powering up the system at all. With the amber light lit we're obviously getting power I'd say it's more likely something is loose or perhaps a problem with the installed RAM.

True enough. I've only had to pull that trick once (Thankfully). I have one O2 that occasionaly stays stuck on amber. The paperclip trick or yanking the power cord wakes it up.

zafunk wrote: True enough. I've only had to pull that trick once (Thankfully).

Me too - one of the O2s I bought from ILM needed the power on jumper trick when I brought it home. The O2 seemed completely dead prior to this - not even a hint of life when you'd hit power.

On the opposite spectrum I received an O2 via eBay a while back that had the power on jumper set to 'on' so the thing would just boot away as soon as it was plugged in I switched it back to the default position and all was well. The eBay description mentioned the system would automatically power up when plugged in and that it was "a common problem with some O2 power supplies"

looks like the box is borked, i tried the jumper thing, i took out the ram and putit back in, same with the hard drive, and the sound card , thast all i have touched in the past, and reseated that metal thing that son top of the mobo, and still got the amber light, i also reseated it.

I havent tried the serial part yet

You'll probably get nothing on the serial console if it's not getting into the prom. Try removing all but a couple of DIMMS. They must be installed matched pairs.

I was serious about the power cord being disconnected when adding/removing boards. If the unit is plugged in and you insert the mobo it could spell the end.

I don't think the system will boot without the PCI riser installed (Could be wrong), so check that it's well seated too.

I think Neko is right, it sounds like the memory or CPU aren't seated right.

Hi, in the O2 hardware reference manual, there's a chapter: troubleshooting. It is somewhat helpful.
http://techpubs.sgi.com/library/tpl/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?coll=hdwr&db=bks&fname=/SGI_EndUser/books/O2_OG/sgi_html/ch04.html

Thanks a lot for the tips. I had a completely dead O2. After setting the jumper next to the Dallas chip it powered up but left me with a flashing yellow light. Looking at the hardware guide this means memory errors. It turned out that two of the DIMMs were getting an error. After a few tries swapping I got it to give me a green light . The drive was trashed so I am installing Irix 6.5.29 from scratch to a new disk (old HP 73.4 Gbyte) I had lying around. I inherited this machine from a friend along with the SGI LCD flat panel so I am a happy camper.

Great news! Lets hear how things progress ..

11 years to fix.. Thank gawd you were not charging by the hour..