[DVE]

Hi all and sorry for n00b questions,

I'm trying to restore and boot the Indigo 2 computer. I bought it in the "Untested" condition on eBay, so the functionality is not known. There were also no SCSI drive and cables included.

First attempt: no boot at all, after switching on, I feel only a smell from inside

As it turned out, the tantalum capacitor on the audio module is burned, it has a short circuit. I disconnected the audio module from the motherboard, will try to fix it later. By the way, can the disconnected audio module prevent the system from boot? In theory, it should not, but I am not 100% sure.

The result after removing an audio board: it's better, I can hear a single 'beep' from the speaker and the LED goes green after 5-10s. But I have no SGI monitor anyway, so I started to look for a 13W3 to VGA adapter.

Second attempt: There are no 13W3 to VGA adapters for SGI in stock (many 13W3 adapters for Sun are available, but are they not compatible?), it looks that they were discontinued many years ago. Finally, I ordered the "Universal 13W3 Male to SVGA" cable with DIP switches on eBay.

Result: nothing, black screen. There are many switches on that adapter, which mode exactly do I need for SGI Indigo 2? Adapter's manual shows 3 possibilities: "SGI Comp Sync Out", "SGI HV Sync Out", "SGI Sync On Green Out", which one is needed for Indigo 2? For each mode, there are also 4 "Mon Type 0" - "Mon Type 3" sub-modes, which one is better?

There is a second connector on the video card which looks like RGB CGA, is there any way to connect it? Is there any way to verify that the video card is not dead? I can check the CGA pins with an oscilloscope, should be some signals on it? Too many unknowns and I have no second working machine to replace parts one by one and find the failed component :(

At least, a single "beep" from the speaker after power on gives hope that the motherboard is booting, but should it display something like BIOS on the screen without any SCSI drive and without an audio module? I think it should, but I never used SGI before.

For now, I've ordered RS422 to USB adapter, will try to see the boot log via serial, will try when the post will arrive. But I'm not sure yet if it works for Indigo 2.

Any more ideas?
Tnx