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I found a "Terra STD/BTO System" (Model 1300065; SN R1342944) lately and (with permission) took it home for testing. I checked all cables and went to starting the server (first time for me working with a server and I have been quite curious. Unfortunatley however the Power-Button would not work at all. I pressed it, pressed and hold; nothing.

I saw a small LED beeing lit and after research (again I am new to servers!) I found its the Status Fault LED.

I tried changing the PS, took the RAM out, cleaned, put them in seperately, on different lanes, tested the Fan, the HDD. I tested if the intruder lock (small button at the back of the case connected to MB) is not working somehow, but it is totally fine. I tried starting with a bridge over the two Power-Switch pins on the MB in case the Front Panel case was broken.

Worth to mention, that (leaking another PS) I used one with a 4-Pin CPU connector instead of a 8-Pin one.

Only thing I got to achieve once was lighting up the Network 1 LED with first connecting the Power-Switch Pins on the MB and then (eventhough it makes no sense) placed the connector bridge on two pins on the MB called "SCSI_HDD". The Status Fault LED was then turned off. This only worked once, but it might help?

After several attemps to even get to the BIOS without luck I took out the connected HDD to see what OS is running. It turned out to be a Windows installation, however I could not find out which one (I can check again when home again).

If there is anything left to try out, that I haven't already please tell me.

I can test any suggestions, but it will take time as I am not home currently...

EDIT: After building out the mainboard this evening I could have a closer look on the pins and it turned out, that the pins CoolerFault were turned on. I checked the cooler installed and it worked well... However when building it back in, I managed to bend that many CPU Pins that I could not fix it... So with the CPU ensured to be broken I checked what it has been and CPU's for that socket are extremely cheap. If it has been something with the CPU that should then fix it. If it actually is something with the fan, I will take an old case fan (3-pin) out and see if it will run with that.

Thanks for any suggestion in the answers. I now do hope that the new processor will fix it.

geisterfurz007
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  • Remove the mother board from the chassis and test with only ram and processor. If you can login in bios then possibility for mother board problem is less. In case there is no response take your mother board to hardware service center. – BDRSuite Sep 22 '16 at 07:22
  • I will try that out later this day. As this server is basically fun/testing I will probably not go to a service center. Thanks for your suggestion :) – geisterfurz007 Sep 22 '16 at 11:30

1 Answers1

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This is essentially a 2 part process: Establish a working baseline, then go through a process of elimination, keeping in mind that the process of elimination can break additional parts that were working before. Depending on the value of the parts this can be costly.

  • unplug everything that is not required to get to bios. ie
    • keep 1 PSU
    • keep 1 motherboard
    • keep 1 cpu
    • keep 1 stick of ram
    • if the motherboard does not have on board video then add a graphics card
    • keep 1 monitor
    • do not plug in anything else, no hdd, no raid card, no network cables, no nic cards, not even a keyboard or mouse
    • though if the system requires a pair of something to boot you must provide it
  • If that still fails I'd suggest get a known working system with compatible parts and swap the parts in 1 at a time identifying each broken part.

  • in between each part swap, put all of the "good" parts back in to see if you broke some of them. (I used to have a HDD that was killing motherboards and power supplies)

  • IF you find enough parts to make a system that gets to BIOS, add 1 additional part at a time and see if it breaks. Again, when you find a broken part, try the previously working system config to see if it is still working.

Edit: as user121391 points out, out-of-band management can be used to help diagnose what is wrong, and check that everything is still ok. Most of these are implemented fairly independently of the main system. HP calls theirs iLo, Dell call theirs iDRAC and/or BMC, and there are many others and there is an industry standard called IPMI. The server you have MAY have some of this capability. It may be worth plugging a cross over cable between the primary nic port (or dedicated management nic) and a laptop an use wireshark or similar to try and figure out what ip address the management system has, or if it is looking for DHCP. The minimum amount of working parts needed for this management/diagnostic system depends on the particular hardware. However I'd hazard a guess that power supply and motherboard need to be pretty good before it would work. You should also monitor this info from as soon as you provide power to the PSU, as they will start working even before the server turns on, even before BIOS POST as they are a separate system.

BeowulfNode42
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  • I did not even connect a monitor in my tests and it would not even start... So you basically suggest the usual process you would take with an usual Desktop PC. I hoped there was any difference between them that would help here. As this will take a bit more time, it will be set for the weekend. Thanks already for your answer; it will be marked as it as well when no other one is provided with different content until the weekend. – geisterfurz007 Sep 22 '16 at 06:29
  • @geisterfurz007 server hardware does not differ much from desktop hardware these days - mostly additional features like ECC, remote management/IPMI, multiple CPU sockets etc. If the system has remote management (usually separate NIC, in older boards serial port, depends on the mainboard), you could try to access it remotely as long as the PSU is connected. – user121391 Sep 22 '16 at 07:03
  • @user121391 Well I do not know that much about servers and the one I found has been made about 12 years ago... And hence it more for fun/testing I have not really thought about new parts for it. And for the last part you suggested (remote control)... Could you provide more about that? Sounds interesting and I would try that out; can I do so with my computer? – geisterfurz007 Sep 22 '16 at 11:28
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    @geisterfurz007 You need hardware for that, each manufacturer has a different name and different implementation, but the generic term is *out-of-band management* and a standard protocol is *IPMI*. It includes monitoring of values like temperature or fan speeds, alerts on critical conditions, remote power on/off/reboot and remote keyboard/video/mouse (KVM), depending on the chip on the mainboard. You will find information by searching for your server mainboard type/model and "ipmi" or "remote management". – user121391 Sep 22 '16 at 15:59