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Figured this is worth asking here since I presently have a 60 lbs door stopper until I can figure this out -

I recently picked up a Dell T320 off of eBay. I've never worked with iDrac before, so it was a bit of a surprise when I turned the computer on and it didn't POST. I knew the LED on the front panel indicated that the SAS cables were disconnected, so I worked my way from there. I eventually reset the iDrac, installed the latest firmware (2.6, running iDrac 7) and can browse through the iDrac.

No matter what I seem to do though, I just can't get the computer to post into the BIOS. Reviewing the logs in iDrac, it keeps complaining about the SAS cables coming from the backplane being disconnected (the RAID card was removed before I bought the server) -

"The storage BP1 SAS B cable is not connected, or is improperly connected."

"The storage BP1 SAS A cable is not connected, or is improperly connected."

It also complains about the four drives there were previously in the system not being there (I removed them, just to troubleshoot) -

"Drive is removed from disk drive bay 1." (and three other entries for Disks 1 / 2 /3)

Going into 'Overview' -> 'Server' -> 'Setup' making a selection for 'First Boot Device' and selecting 'BIOS Setup' or 'BIOS Boot Manager' still doesn't yield any POST or BIOS on boot. The physical LED indicator on the motherboard is green, and all the hardware listed under 'Overview' -> 'Hardware Overview' passes with green checkmarks...I'm at a loss at what's preventing this computer from starting up.

Weird things I've noticed about the computer that are somewhat unexpected -

1) None of the indicator lights for the drives in caddies are lit. Even though the SAS cables aren't connected, the backplane still has power, so I would have expected the lights to turn on?

2) No USB keyboard numlock/caps when the computer is turned on.

3) VNC doesn't seem to work at all, but iDrac via HTTP and SSH seem to work.

4) I have a 2.5 SSD powered/connected directly to the motherboard, but this disk doesn't seem to show up 'Overview' -> 'Storage' -> 'Disks'. I'm guessing the RAID card that orchestrates this would present the disks/iDrac wouldn't acknowledge disks connected directly to the motherboard.

Thanks,

Alex Karpowitsch
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  • Do you have a screen when booting up the server or is the VGA output blank/black? – unNamed Mar 29 '19 at 07:40
  • @unNamed - yes, there is a VGA connection going from the motherboard to a monitor - the output is blank. Some additional Googling yielded that I should probably confirm with racadm that video output is enabled - (https://www.dell.com/community/PowerEdge-Hardware-General/Poweredge-T710-No-video-display/td-p/4036163/page/2) I was yieled '1', so video output is enabled. Except I have no video output. I reset the NVRAM, tried different USB keyboards/mouse/VGA cable/monitor, still no post. Replaced the Li battery on the board, too. Still no dice. RIP my T320. – Alex Karpowitsch Mar 29 '19 at 20:04
  • Try add a graphics card. Because iDRAC (imo) is booting after BIOS. And therefore your server works properly. But maybe the graphics has a failure. – unNamed Apr 01 '19 at 09:05
  • You should be able to hit Ctrl-R at the appropriate point to enter the RAID BIOS, at which time you can remove the old configurations. – Michael Hampton Apr 23 '19 at 17:43
  • Did you try a minimum to Post, and by minimum to Post I mean to remove the control Panel as well as the CMOS battery ( the control Panel does hold some config info) – xyzusername Apr 23 '19 at 17:41

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