[weblacky]

Okay all, well GOOD News and some...we'll see news.

Okay, I removed the mainboard again, flipped it over and looked at the back of the DIMM slots. I found a SMALL, but present, amount of materials that MAY have been conductive (unknown) and used a USB microscope to go to EACH IC and if I saw any hair, gunk, bridges, I used a pin and cleared the legs. I inspected all ICs along the slots. I generally checked for a free legs (didn't find one) and removed any debris I found...but didn't see ANY scratches, or cracked joints/movable legs.

However two chips did have some kind of hair or the the like and one was IN the solder! I have no way of knowing if what I cleared was the difference or not...but I did it.

I examined the slots themselves...boy they look clean to me, no dust, no lint, no hairs. I didn't want to place a cotton swab in there as it would LEAVE hairs...so I didn't do much.

So, I put everything back, turned it on with serial terminals hooked up, it turned on and an instantly complained on the terminal console that all the DIMM1 addressing didn't work and since that didn't work it could see ANY memory!!! It claimed DIMM1 had to work regardless of anything and it had too many issues.

WOW, okay...I wouldn't have thought things would get worse...but I then took all DIMMs OUT and reinstalled just two in DIMM1 & DIMM3 slots. Started again...said it saw the RAM and in disabled slots so re-enable them and said 1024MB...Okay better...added back the other modules...Same original issue...DIMM3 is 256MB instead of 512MB, cutting memory down.

Hmmmm...full circle hu?

Okay, reinserted ALL DIMMs and played...wiggle wiggle wiggle...nope...wiggle wiggle wiggle yeah!

I then went to debug 0x010d, cac, clearalllogs, initilogs, resest...After that...I've never been able to see the console again from serial 1...gone. L1 works fine...console, no output...okay...moving on.

Still have a bad snaphat so double-boot boot/reset/boot and I'm in graphical PROM = 2048MB....NO ISSUES! Sees ALL the RAM now. Memory inits and done....no more memory sizing issue (I still think it's a bad joint)...but I won't be removing these DIMMs as I don't care about a 4GB Fuel, 2GB is great so I'm happy. But if happens again I'll likely manually reflow the ICs under the DIMM3 slot and PERHAPS the slot itself since it's ALSO a SMD leg-stye component.

The error_dump error register didn't go away during this, same error.

Can someone with a working Fuel please do a debug 0x010d and a error_dump and see what comes up. What's it supposed to say?

Okay so, outside of snaphat issue...I'm mostly good...let's install Irix 6.5.30!


So first I hook up the ORIGINAL SGI drive...yeah ~18GB Quantum Atlas II that looks a heck of a lot like an IBM...got to PROM...all IDs filled with drives...great original owner never set the jumpers. Sigh....remove drive, lookup pins, find ID 1, micro-jumper ID 1 (great thing I BOUGHT micro-jumpers last year). Reinstall...now I have a DVD and an HDD...great.

DVD doesn't read well while system is on it's side. Remove all serial cables, close up panel, run system, insert CD into DVD drive.

Runs fine now. HDD was partially hosed SGI label... I don't care about what the previous owner had...given the poor condition of the system.

Okay, FXed without wiping since label was hosed anyway. Back to PROM, "install Software", from CDROM, GO!!!!!

progress...progress...done..Inst (would you like to format, yes!), XFS 4096, select disks...here you go...running.................::me feeding discs and standing:::: ......Done...ready to reboot, yes, reboots, I catch it on PROM before first boot. Turn it off...I'm done for tonight.

So it RAN and installed Irix without crashing?! That's progress! It passes startup memory tests, progress! So all I need to do is go through first boot and run diags...and we'll see where I am.

The PROM install claimed it was already the same version 6.5.30 wanted to install...so wasn't installed. L1 is unknown (if it did anything), likely not. But I want to ensure a stable OS before I tried the flashing dance.

I don't know if I got my serial console back..I'm hoping it magically come back after updates and fixes...:-(

So, good news overall! Once things are 100% reliable, I'll try the original V10 card to see if it really does work.