Help - I have a serious problem here on my home computer.

I have an ultra 80 that was fairly heavily packed.
4 cpus
4 GB ram
SunPci II card
Creator 3d
Dual SE Sun scsi card

I then fitted a non-Sun HVD SCSI card, which was reconised, okay,
along the devices on it's bus.

I left the machine on but found 36 hours later it was off. I think,
but are not sure, this was the cover not being properly in place, so
the microswitch may have just been on the point where it powered the
machine down. I needed to reseat the cover to get it to power up.

Power was applied, and some SCSI parity errors were seen buring boot.
I see mesages about switing to 'asyns mode' but did not investigate,
but intended doing it soon.

Keen to try out the autoloader I'd just fitted 36 hours earlier on the
new HVD SCSI card, I did a dump to tape, and found it worked and the
tape could be read. 15 minutes later the display was dark.

Noting could get any life from the TFT, so I tried a Sun monitor and
finally a serial console. I've tried powering on/off the U80 about 20
times and usualy see nothing on the serial console, but have seen
'fatel reset' on a couple of occasions.

This looks pretty serious to me. I've tried removing all PCI cards,
but that does not help.

The fact I'd fitted the IBM HVD SCSI card sometime within 36 hours of
the probems seems too much of a coincidence, but it might just be
that.

It could be
1) The IBM SCSI card destroyed the motherboard, but the card has
worked okay since fitting.
2) The power drain of all the bits has destroyed the PSU. But the
light on the front panel lights, and disks spin up. I think the PSU
supplies 3.3 V too, but I've not checked for this.

Any thoughts? Any suggestons how to proceed?

It seems to me the motherboard is probably dead, but I'm hopefully
wrong.

What does 'fatal reset' seen a couple of times on the serial port
mean? I assume it's not a good sign.

Dr. David Kirkby
david---dot--kirkby ---at-- onetel--not--net

see_my_signature_for_my_real_address@hotmail.com (Dr. David Kirkby) wrote in message news:<c99d2c79.0405080032.3f38a6e5@posting.google. com>...
> Help - I have a serious problem here on my home computer.


I think I have found the problem to this. At least I hope so !!

One of the 4 CPUs seems (X1195A, P/N 501-5539) seems to have developed
a fault, as whenever that CPU is in any slot, the machine fails to
work. Without that CPU present, the machine runs okay. Hence I'm now
down to only 3 CPUs, but that's far less of a hassle than a compleatly
dead U80.

Why the CPU died, after being in the machine for over a year without
any problems, I do not know.

I think the so-called ECACHE problems only affected the slower CPUs,
and not the 450 MHz ones used in a U80.

But whatever, I think my CPU has died. At least I hope so.

Dr. David Kirkby.