3 dead Indigo2's in a year- any similar experiences?
Ben Cannon
Richard Akis wrote:
>
> In the the group I work in, we've had two Indigo2 workstations
> for about 15 months, one used by myself and the other by a
> colleague. Our troubles began when my colleague's Indigo2
> simply died for no apparent reason a year ago. SGI sent
> This past week, I moved offices. My Indigo2 was taken
> from my old deskside by our local computer technician,
> placed gently onto a cart, rolled to an elevator, rolled
> to my new office, and then placed on my new desk. The
> result of this seemingly gentle journey was a workstation that
> would no longer power up- apparently, it was another
> motherboard failure.
I've worked with SGIs for a while, I won 2 of them, and
I've yet to see a single hardware problem.
I do limited SGI administration/network integration
and one fo my clients has had an Indigo^2 for more than 4 years
and never had any trouble with it (it's still the fastest box
in the building, BTW :)
The only times I have ever heard of trouble with SGIs is when
someone tries to upgrade them. Often trouble srtikes in the form of
loose graphics/CPU daughtercards.
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Richard Akis
In the the group I work in, we've had two Indigo2 workstations
for about 15 months, one used by myself and the other by a
colleague. Our troubles began when my colleague's Indigo2
simply died for no apparent reason a year ago. SGI sent
3 new Indigo2s as replacements before we finally got
one that actually worked- the major problem seemed to be that
they kept on sending the wrong type of Indigo2 (our
original had a green-blue box and the non-functional
replacements were all purple). It was a month before
my colleague's system was running again.
A few months later, we upgraded the cpus and graphics
boards, but only after a false start- an SGI serviceman came
over to do the installation, opened up one of the Indigo2s
and removed a few things such as the the hard disk, and
then realized that we didn't have all the parts neccessary
to perform the upgrade. He then proceeded to put the
Indigo2 back together. Unfortunately, the reassembled
workstation would no longer power up. He had to go back
to the shop to get a replacement motherboard to get the
thing running again.
This past week, I moved offices. My Indigo2 was taken
from my old deskside by our local computer technician,
placed gently onto a cart, rolled to an elevator, rolled
to my new office, and then placed on my new desk. The
result of this seemingly gentle journey was a workstation that
would no longer power up- apparently, it was another
motherboard failure.
Do the experiences I've described ring any bells with anyone
out there? It strikes me as being totally unreasonable that
something as minor as moving the workstation or even just
opening the box (by a qualified specialist at that) would
cause a hardware failure. I'm now amazed that these workstations
even function at all after being shipped! Does anyone know
what the deal is here? Is there some sort of manufacturer's
defect that has made these workstations more fragile than
glass?
Richard A.
Jie Yuan
I think it is a very rare occasion for SGI boxes to fail so much. I have
seem more than 1/2 dozen SGI boxes around and none had such problem. My
deep sympathy to you! Jie
In article <akis-10019...@news.asu.edu>, ak...@enws460.eas.asu.edu
(Richard Akis) wrote:
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-- Jie Yuan - Pharmacology & Cell Biophysics - U. Cincinnati --
-- POBox 670575, 231 Bethesda Av., Cincinnati, OH 45267-0575 --
-- jie....@uc.edu - www.uc.edu/~yuanj - using NewsWatcher --
ma...@invisix.com
Are you using any UPS or power conditioning equipment on your SGI's? I've
found that's made a HUGE difference for me with dying power supplies and misc
unexplainable hardware failures in a variety of boxes. I've had good luck
with APC...
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MATT | mailto:ma...@invisix.com NeXTMail Ok
jurcich | http://www.invisix.com
"You know, BA, with a pair of pliers and a little time, you can fix anything
except dinner."
Lige Hensley
Richard Akis wrote:
>
> In the the group I work in, we've had two Indigo2 workstations
> for about 15 months, one used by myself and the other by a
> colleague. Our troubles began when my colleague's Indigo2
> simply died for no apparent reason a year ago. SGI sent
>
> from my old deskside by our local computer technician,
> placed gently onto a cart, rolled to an elevator, rolled
> to my new office, and then placed on my new desk. The
> result of this seemingly gentle journey was a workstation that
> would no longer power up- apparently, it was another
> motherboard failure.
We've got around 70+ SGI's and we've got 1 or 2 down with hardware
problems at any given point. Currently, we've got about 10 machines in
need of repair.
The problems we have range from intermitent flakyness to failure to
power up. The machines with the most trouble are the High Impact 250MHz
R4400 and Solid Impact 200Mhz R10K. SGI has told us that a lot of our
problems are due to faulty motherboards, CPUs, and graphics cards.
My favorite experience was with 2 Indy R5K's we had. They would
randomly reboot for no reason (just sitting there at the login prompt).
After a long and painful game of phone tag, they finally sent us new
ones citing hardware problems from the factory. SGI was generous enough
to send us 2 replacement machines that had the same problem...and were
USED! We promptly returned the broken, used machines (broken plastic
cases and all).
Needless to say, I'm not impressed.
--
-lige
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