[johnnym]

Thanks. I am afraid I did try. Removed and reseated DIMMs, processor (I actually have two spare IIIis at hand), PCI cards, tried all connectors (speakers, SCSI, etc), NVRAM, but to no avail. The machine will not POST or reach OBP at all, or show any kind of indication (no beeps from the speaker, so the troubleshooting manual's only suggestion is to "replace motherboard"). Tried with or without different keyboards, tried to connect to the console port, no signs of life whatsoever. :s

It might also be worth a try to strip the machine down to the absolute minimum, i.e. no PCI cards, no memory (I know that at least for a Blade 100 it will then complain about missing memory on the serial console port!), one known-working CPU only, no NVRAM, no keyboard (I think only the existence of a connected keyboard is checked, but to be sure, also remove any attached mouse, so the console gets rerouted to the serial port, usually ttya).

Another option might be to try known-good hardware like memory or CPUs in the Blade 2500 (w/o other hardware attached/inserted) or parts from the Blade 2500 in a known-good machine. There might be a risk to damage good hardware with bad hardware, but to be completely honest, I've never seen this for my machines. Actually I never even came across a non-working Sun machine either, and I've got plenty of them. They're rock solid.

Maybe you try to fix your V240 first, as it has an SC/ALOM with environment monitoring, you should be able to diagnose things easier there. When fixed you have a set of known-good hardware to test with the Blade 2500 and a known-good machine to test parts from the Blade 2500.