[Podboy]

So, as a follow up...
It turns out that replacing the DIMMs was all it took to get the system to behave normally again.

Hats off to Raion for identifying the symptoms as a simple memory error!

Can't help it, but I was a bit shocked that was all it took to get the hard drive spinning up reliably and the system to POST. Not knowing the system well, I imagined that I would have been consistently greeted with a specific memory error rather than with an inconsistent and non-descript ip30 board failure. To my logic, the memory (and hd) error struck me as a board failure and not the other way around. And certainly the lightbar blinks reinforced that thought.

It's interesting, and I hope this helps some future someone diagnose their Octane probs.