[ndp]

Once upon a time I was real into the SGI scene. Hung around Nekochan all the time, but have been distant for the last 5+ years. Getting back into it with today's discovery.

I was over helping my grandfather with some stuff today and ended up looking for some stuff in his basement. Low and behold under a pile of garbage, I unearthed my Octane.

I haven't touched this thing since probably 2013. Quite frankly, I thought I had thrown it away. But here we are.

I struggled greatly with it back then, but I don't really remember what was going on. I never could get it to boot up. It's very well configured - SSE and SE graphics, dual R12ks, a bunch of RAM, etc. I also have a second Lucent PSU and a single CPU card (not sure what, I think an R10k).

I can't find my 13w3 -> VGA right now, but I did just plug the unit in and observe. Nothing. Tried both PSUs. Anyone have some advice as where I should start to troubleshoot? I used to know a bunch about this stuff and am slowly re-assimilating things but I'm admittedly lost.

Thanks. Happy to keep everyone posted on progress.

[Raion]

Did you open the front door and try pushing the power button?

do you hear a clicking noise from the power supply after you push the button or after you have disconnected it from the power?

[ndp]

Yeah, I didn't even try with the door on.

One power supply does some clicking when plugged in. The other does not. For what it's worth, the one that's doing the clicking is "PWR.SPPLY.S2" per the label and the other is a "PWR.SPPLY.SR".

[jwhat]

Yeah, I didn't even try with the door on.

One power supply does some clicking when plugged in. The other does not. For what it's worth, the one that's doing the clicking is "PWR.SPPLY.S2" per the label and the other is a "PWR.SPPLY.SR".

I would:

1. Take off front panel and make sure power button is being pressed
2. Take out and blow out boards, ensuring compression connectors are all looking ok (don't touch !!!)
3. Reseat the boards and try again

Beyond that things get more complicated ... but probability wise, it is unlikely you have two dud power supplies.

I have never seen that happens when you try to turn on an Octane without any disk, graphics and systems boards, but it might be helpful if someone did to see if it shows same behaviour as your machine. If so then it would indicate dead system board.

Given lack of lack of spare parts doing more would likely require spending $$ or finding someone local with Octane who can help with testing parts in known good machine.

Cheers from Oz,


John.

[ndp]

Thanks for the advice John. I'll take everything apart and clean everything. The card edge compression connectors look good. I'll take some pictures of everything while I'm at it.

Will report back.

[Raion]

You don't need to clean the compression connectors, neither should you. This appears to be a clear cut PSU failure, even with a bad frontplane or motherboard the unit will still boot

[ndp]

I'll pop the PSUs open. Anything to look for specifically besides blown/leaky caps? I'm kind of surprised that both would have failed.

[Raion]

As I said, if there's a bad motherboard or frontplane involved, it'll boot as soon as power is added. The softswitch is controlled AFAIK on the frontplane and relies on signaling from the mainboard. At least, that's my working theory.

PSUs for the octane fail sitting still (I would know, I have owned a ton of PSUs for them) and are getting harder to find.

Besides leaky caps, there's probably other things like mosfets, diodes etc.