[weblacky]

I will read over this entire thread when I have more time, but right now I just want to say well done!

Thanks! That means a lot from a Pro, like yourself. We build on the work of others and people such as yourself did a heck of a lot of work before I came along.  I'd not be able to even do any of this without your findings over the years, that you shared online, along with others.  Each putting together the bits to draw new theories or conclusions.

I do appreciate that SGI tech was made during the transition to very high speed frequencies and so most of the parts aren't BGA and can be worked by hand!  While there are some BGA parts, they don't make up the majority.  With the nice tools we have today it makes this doable (to a point).

I have also found SGI placed a heck of a lot of info on their test points and their firmware for board testing/troubleshooting (which I find odd because to my knowledge they didn't refurb boards..so they must have done it purely for Q&A and failure analysis).  Which helped somewhat.