[weblacky]

While what I said is by no means definitive, my mental process is it also prevents trouble when you rapidly plug in a machine, test, decide it needs work, then you quickly unplug and start pulling things again.

I’m not sure how long it takes for the PSU to really discharge. So my fear would be it takes like 1-2 minutes, and I’m excited and impatient, so right after turning it off I start disconnecting boards and such.

The PSU removal (on nearly all SGIs) forces me to wait and forces me to ensure disconnect from the system. Otherwise if I’m too fast, I might still have charge on the PSU when I go to wiggle out the mainboard. It’s just a precaution that removes several very real scenarios if I’m not paying attention.

However I’m not so hyper that I use ESD straps like SGI tells you. Unless I plan on physically touching a bunch of contacts or metal parts, I handle by grounds and plastics mostly.


If you’ve already done what you can with the CPU card reseat, visual inspect connectors, I’d either try fiddle with RAM (boot with minimal set) or pull all non-essential parts (Hdds and audio card) as well as trade minimal RAM and see if you get a new symptom.

Also I assume you tried the old fan.