[SUMMARY]: Bad elite3d m6?

Hi guyz,

	First of all, I'd really like to thank David Fung, DJ and  Michael 
Connolly for their helpful replies.But most of all I'd sincerely to 
thank David for his guidance regarding this issue. It ended up being a 
bad m6 card. The vendor replaced the card and now I'm working on the 
machine which doesn't exhibit any of the problems reported my inital 
mail. Hopefully, this helps out someone.

Thanks guyz!! You rock!! Honestly you all do!!!

Ok, now for the problem:

On a working Ultra 10, I install the elite3d-m6 video card and boot up 
to the console (via a serial cable). At the OBP ok command, I issue 
the command show-displays. The m6 card is found and it works for a 
minute. Then the machine automatically shut off. No amounts of power 
cycle would restart the machine.The only way to turn it on again is to 
take the card out and restart the machine. Even then, putting the card 
back in only works 1/3 times.

I've been able to reproduce this repeatedly and in succession.Thinking 
it might just be the seating of the card, I took it out and put it 
back in but still have same problem. At times, now when I seat the 
card in properly, the machine doesn't even want to turn on. Take the 
card out and it starts working. However, the machine works perfectly 
with the m3 card.

Michael suggested that I should check where I'm installing the the 
card, i.e. in the UPA slot and not the PCI slot. In fact, it was being 
installed in the UPA Slot. But somehow my replies to Michael were 
bounced off by their MTA's Recieved: header limit.

DJ suggested that I should check card or the PSU in the U10 by 
swapping or testing it. He also mentioned that I should use a IPA 
spray for this UPA slot in case there was no card before.

On my continued discussions with David, here's David's Reply:

-------------------- Original Message -------------------------------
Subject: RE: Bad elite3d m6?
Date: Sat, 15 Nov 2003 16:34:50 -0800
From: David Fung <dfung@symian.com>
Reply-To: dfung@symian.com
To: Kevin.A.Sindhu@Mail.AC

These problems are always hard to isolate without the ability to swap 
devices.

It still sounds like a bad m6 card to me though.  If you let the card
sit out for hours, then it works briefly but won't work again until
out for hours, that's even more reason to suspect the card.  After
it's sat out for a while, the parts will drop to room temperature and
capacitors have had time to discharge.  As soon as you power up,
things will heat up.  When they reach a certain temperature, then some
component is failing.  If you power down for a second, the part will
start cooling, but it will probably be significant time before
everything is cool enough that you can get through boot.  That sounds
exactly like what you're seeing.

The m6 card is particularly dense, so I would guess it's almost
certainly a defective chip that's misbehaving on the card.  When the
chip reaches it's temperature failure point, then there's no
predicting what happens.  It may receive a command and just lock up or
it could take action improperly and cause some sort of error elsewhere
in the system. At this point, you probably really need to try a known
good m6 card in your system to rule out problems there or try this m6
in a different UPA machine to see whether the card is bad.  You really
need to make a definitive decision on the m6 card before looking
further at your U10, especially if the U10 (with or without your m3
card) is working OK otherwise.

There's some danger that a bad m6 card can damage your computer, so
you really want to do the minimal checking possible.

One other thing to try would be a shot of cold spray on the card when
it fails.  You really want to find a hardware-knowledgeable person to
do this, to prevent destroying your system.  If you let the card fail,
shoot it with cold spray and it can boot again, then fail, they this
would be a more certain indication of the card being bad.

If you don't know that this card works properly in a different system,
then I think it's almost certainly your problem here.

David Fung

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Kind Regards,

-Kevin

http://www.open-systems.org/
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