[vvuk]

No, I cannot boot my fuel without a graphics card. Without a graphics card the voltage/temp/fan sensor i2c network is broken (incomplete) and you lose contact with bedrock i2c completely. 

It’s possible you can can do that with env off, but with this unit I cannot turn env off and boot (I tried, I think) and it refused without communication with the i2c network.  It may be related to my L1 revision. 

I’ve never heard of someone being able to boot a headless fuel, you’d have to document how you did that because from what I know you must have a graphics card to get to PROM on a fuel, unless someone else can shine some light in that as most nekonomicon pages describe a dead graphics card as preventing booting. 

I just did this ~4 weeks ago. I bought a fuel that came without graphics (owner wanted to keep the V12). While waiting for a graphics card to come in, I wanted to set up the ATX power supply, SATA controller/boot drive, and work through some netboot issues.

There was nothing special to do. You do not need a graphics card to get to PROM -- you can access serial PROM output while connected to the L1 port by pressing Control-D, or connect to the first serial port on the back; the system will default to console=d mode when there is no graphics. (IRIX does install without graphics support in this case, e.g. GFX=NONE; you have to do a bit of work to tell inst that you do in fact have a graphics card later on and reinstall a few packages to get working graphics.) A _dead_ graphics card I can see preventing booting, if it's half-dead (i.e. system sees it but it's not working; it'll likely keep trying to shove you into graphics console mode). A completely missing one should be fine.

I did not have to disable env monitoring for any of this. In fact I definitely did not wanted to do so, because I was constantly monitoring the power levels due to the new power supply for the first bit. I had full operational env monitoring the entire time. I was able to fully install IRIX, and I used the machine for a few days doing some headless things over ssh until the video card arrived.

I had zero errors from env or any L1 warnings at any point. I don't have full logs unfortunately (or maybe I do, I'll do some digging).

You actually have a newer L1 version than I do -- yours:

Code:

Firmware Image B: Rev. 1.28.3, Built 03/20/2004 00:01:57

mine (from version command output):

Code:

L1 1.20.6 (Image B), Built 03/12/2003 11:01:29    [1MB image]

(You can also see if there's a different version in the other flash slot, via "flash status v"; if there is, you can boot it by using the flash command, see "help flash". Note I don't know how to reset back to A/B physically in case something fails, so ymmv there.)

Even with a different L1 version, the physical I2C topology would not change. So if you are having problems communicating with bedrock env I2C that resolves itself when a graphics card is inserted, my guess is that there's a break in the i2c lines on the mainboard and the graphics card plugged in ends up providing another route to the bedrock i2c lines causing it to "appear". Since you have a hint that I2C is not working, I would check connectivity between the SDA/SCL pins on all the DS1780s on the mainboard. Every SDA should be connected to every other SDA, same with SCL. (And if you manage to trace them, they should all connect to whatever chip is the i2c leader.)

I would really try to resolve all these issues without graphics first. You run the risk of there being damage on the mainboard that is frying the graphics card in some way, and that any replacement card you get will end up damaged in a similar way.