Greetings all, a few questions regarding an R520 which after a few days of messing with I am concluding that the motherboard is faulty. Have read up on this and have come across others who have faced similar issues. Just looking for pointers so any thoughts are always appreciated.

To start with, when power cables are connected to the R520, shortly after the rear System ID button begins to flash amber (every second).

Q1, what does this indicate? Not been able to find any mention of this anywhere.

Once powered on, the system boots normally and initializes the RAM and the takes its time with initializing iDRAC, then displays the 'Alert! iDRAC not responding, Rebooting...', after reboot the fans crank up to full speed. The system will boot after a while and a warning of iDRAC initialization error (also SWC0700 - iDRAC not ready. The configuration values cannot be accessed.) and a couple F1 presses to continue.

Have tried flashing the BIOS, but it seems to fail from Windows using the .exe updaters. Was able to update the BIOS using EFI to the latest. Tried also running the linux based bootable ISOs from dell.app.box.com/.../BootableR520 but I think this only managed to update the firmware on the NIC.

I have also tried booting the R520 with minimal hardware as advised for POST, also removed and reseated every component. Disconnected everything and removed and installed the MB, etc etc...

Wish I had a second R520 to swap the MB out with and see if this is the case....

Q2, As the unit is not in warranty, anything else I should do to try to revive iDRAC or the Lifcycle Controller?

Q3, Last one I promise, I have SATA drives in slots 4, 5, 6 & 7 and connected via the Backplane connector B to the SATA port on the MB. The embedded SATA is set to AHCI and the drives work fine, only that the status LED on the hard drives flash amber quickly and constantly, what does this signify? I thought that this light does not work with SATA drives and AHCI mode.

Anyhow, my apologies for the long post but in a nutshell, very similar to this post on Reddit.