CUR-DLS Sudden Death ??

  • Thread starter Thread starter Arifi Koseoglu
  • Start date Start date
A

Arifi Koseoglu

Hello everyone,

At the office we have an HP NetServer E800 which has a CUR-DLS Rev.
1.03 as its motherboard. This server worked fine for approx. Three
years but apparently passed away last friday when it would not boot
after a shutdown. This motherboard is the one with the 896 SCSI
controller.

The configuration is:
2x128 MB RAM (the original ram that came installed when we bought it)
HP 9.1G SCSI HDD (Boot)
HP SCSI DAT
IDE Cdrom
IDE HDD

Situation:
The power on the MoBo seems OK (CPU fan working)
No video signal is sent to the monitor.
NO beeps during power-up.
Standard "RAM missing" signal when powered on with no RAM module
installed, which goes away when powered on with the ram installed
Keyboad leds (all three) get lit for a very short (shorted than usual)
time during power-up and then the keyboard seems dead.

Same behavior with ram modules installed in different slots.
We also tried with a secondary PCI video card - no change.
We also tried the above combinations with all drives etc disconnected
- no changes.
We tried to reset the cmos with the on-board jumpers - no change
We removed the battery and waited for approx. 1 hour - no change

Since this server was our domain controller, we need a very quick
resolution. What can have gone wrong? Is the MoBo dead ? Is there
anything else we can try ?

Many thanks in advance,
-arifi
 
Arifi Koseoglu wrote:
....
Since this server was our domain controller, we need a very quick
resolution. What can have gone wrong? Is the MoBo dead ? Is there
anything else we can try ?

Many thanks in advance,
-arifi
Click to expand...

Place a disk in the floppy drive and see if it tries to access it at
some point. If yes, then the BIOS boot block might be intact and you
might be able to resurrect the BIOS (if it is a BIOS problem of course)
with a properly configured rescue floppy (instructions should be
provided by Asus, depending on what vendor's BIOS is used. For award
BIOS the process is widely documented, don't know about AMI. I assume
Phoenix would be similar to award nowadays).
I've had a Soyo 5EHM board literally die after running a memory testing
program (docmem or something like that). It was repeatable. For some
reason it killed the ability to detect a video card, halting the whole
boot process. When rescue-flashed by the automated award recovery
procedure, it came back to life.
Also if there is an ISA slot you might be able to get video by
installing an ISA video card. But I doubt your board has ISA slots so
all you can possibly try is this 'blind' recovery procedure, or just
order a new, working BIOS to see if that's where the problem is.

Regards
Nikos
 
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