[weblacky]

I just bought both a Tezro CPU (Node) board - low end dual 600Mhz -SGI 030-1863-001. As well as it's mated SGI 030-1881-004 Rev A Mainboard for $375 (after tax & SH) via eBay best offer! Dealer had them a while, didn't really care so much about the posted price as one might have thought (he wanted $600 originally). This does include (and I had to pay) eBay sales tax as a buyer in my state (new and it SUCKKKKKSSSS), but after shipping it's till $375 for everything, to my door!

This means I'll have ALL the VRMs now outside my own systems. While I might be awhile, I'll desolder the VRMs with DC/DC converters on them to probe and use these boards to plan out a rebuild buy (without having to risk either my own complete Tezros in this part of the process) to gather parts and measurements! Then I can do a huge electronics purchase and use these boards as first rebuilds.

I'm fairly sure I cannot boot to the L1 without a IO9 card, So I may be on the lookout for that....

But I now have a old "spare" tezro PSU (claims working but will rebuild anyway), and a "spare" CPU and Mainboard to recap and probe around on. It would be nice if I could rebuild those and start them just enough to get the L1 up and check voltages via L1, then I can transplant the PSU and mainboard into my malfunctioning Tezro, then see about rebuilding my old Nodeboard + VRMs in the same way, then again on my latest tezro (that currently claims no issues). But I have an older Tezro that has a 1.8v VRM going low failure...so it all needs to be rebuilt.

Also, checked around on the changing some polymer electrolytic caps to SMPS targeted MLCCs (On the low-voltage VRMs only) and keeping some caps with the same Panasonic SVP line (they still make those). These things are insanely pricey. A single MLCC 470uF 4v cap is $5 PER CAP! The SVP caps are like $1.70 a cap! To get higher voltage tolerant MLCC caps, the converter datasheet claims I can parallel the cOUT caps. So they have a 330uF& 220uF MLCCs at 6.3v, so I could place a 220uF+330uF parallel on the pads for a 550uF @ 6.3v to replace a 470uF Polymer (or I guess do two 220uF = 440uF and measure the 20% error and hope to get very close to 470uF). With the +/- 20% error possible, I'm likely to bench test a couple caps and mate them to give a closer 470uF value.

The converter IC claims it can accept a range of ESRs and caps and will re-tune its feedback loop to help prevent oscillations. This would mean the hard working VRMs would pretty much never have ESR degradation issues again for several decades. But the converter works at a known frequency range, the rest of the caps are more debouncing and likely I'll replace them with duplicate caps (exact same model since they are still made) to prevent problems.

So an entire rebuild could wander into the like $100+ just in parts for the CPU board! Not like $5 here. So that already tells you the potential service cost of the recapping + changing certain coils on just one of these boards). Like 2 hours labor and maybe $100 in just parts! I think the mainboard will be cheaper because it has fewer dying parts...but still materials won't be cheap.

Luckily I own it all, so cost isn't the first consideration on the rebuild.