R910 pcie training error embedded nic 3

Tuplink,

What is the specific error you are seeing? From what you are saying it sounds like the issue may be the motherboard itself, specifically the embedded nic on the motherboard. If you have a spare system we could test it by swapping in a known good motherboard.

Another thing we can try is updating the BIOS, and iDrac to see if that helps.

Let me know what you see, but it is likely the board that is bad. 

Chris, I do not have another system to try it out. However the broadcom controllers are on the io card that I have replaced. Could you tell me how to go about updating the bios as I can not get into system services or the bios as bios is after pcie training.

NIC 3 and 4 show up with no MAC and dont show up in the NetExtreme II Config(CTR+S at boot)

Could the LEDs on the board tell me something

I apologize, for some reason I had an R610 in mind with that. I did notice that the BIOS is several updates back, but the key is being able to update with the Training error. See if when you perform the NVRAM clearing, if the BIOS happens to be available when you power on with the jumper. If so then try disabling the NIC 3 and 4 and see if it lets us proceed. If so then we will HAVE to walk the BIOS up to current, as it could be very problematic if we try to jump that many updates to current. 

Let me know.

i am having no luck at getting into bios.    is there a way to update BIOS from or disable the NICs from idrac. also if i put idrac on all LOMs i can use ports 3 and 4

also looking at the release notes for BIOS 2.7 it says "This BIOS release resolves the potential for unpredictable system behavior in Dell systems running Intel(R) Xeon(R) Processor E7-2800/4800/8800 Series."

of corse i have that CPU  would it be worth while to drop the system down to 1x X7500?

Tuplink,

You could to test, but the system will emit an error on CPU configuration. No with you replacing the PCIe NIC card, do you happen to have another R910 currently working that we can test boot with the original cards in, just to see if they are functioning or are bad, or if you have known good NIC cards to put into this R910.

Basically I am trying to eliminate the variables, to see if the issue resides in the risers slot on the motherboard.

Another thing we can try is taking the server to it's Minimum to Post hardware configuration. That is removing everything but the following;

• Two Processors to POST and boot to DOS or OS (can use one as we said, but system emits an error message for improper CPU configuration and will not hand off to boot, but will complete Post)
• Two DDR3 RDIMMs in Slots 1 and 2 of Memory Riser_A
• I/O riser installed
• One power supply
• 2.5" SAS backplane (4-drive or 16-drive) installed and connected to system board
• Control panel connected to system board
• Power Distribution Board connected to the power supply and system board

Let me know.

I tried another known good io card  and have failed to post with minimal config even removed h700 to no avail error dosnt change    also at one point it was saying something like failed to enter system services will reboot in 30 seconds but can't get it to do it again. My thought is that somehow the mobo is toast. But don't have any way to actually test this theory.

Tuplink,

It is starting to look like that is indeed the case with the motherboard. The System Services issue you saw was likely due to repeated rebooting, but power was on long enough for it to initialize afterwards, which is why you don't continue seeing it.