[shadragon]

Good Day,

I have a Dell Poweredge 1850 server that was donated to our school from a company that shut down. I have no history on this unit and it is out of warranty. When I apply power, the fans kick up, but I get no video and the amber trouble light flashes. Drives do not spin up and there is no POST. There are no beeps either.

I have:

- Swapped memory modules
- Swapped A + B power supply units
- Disconnected A power unit, running exclusively on B.
- Disconnected B power unit, running exclusively on A.
- Tried alternate VGA video output on front of server
- Cleared NVRAM
- Changed CMOS battery
- Reseated CPU's
- Reseated HD's, FD, CD and all other backplane connectors I could access.

No change.

Would hate to throw it out. Not having POST/BIOS access tells me it is a basic error, but I cannot find it. Any suggestions?

Cheers.

S

[tehcamel]

check on the back for the Dell cluster of 4 diag LEDs (do the 1850s have them?)

could also try plugging the ilo in, and seeing if you can find it..

[wullieb1]

You should get an error message on the front panel.

[shadragon]

tehcamel - No LED cluster. Just a single flashing amber light. As for ILO do you mean DRAC? I do not have any here.

wullieb1 - There is no LCD panel on this server. The front has two LED's for network and one for power plus the trouble light. That's it. Sorry.

[Dumber]

Some servers might have an issue if the top cover is pressing on the RAM modules. Did you tried it with the lid open?

[cruachan]

Generally if you call Dell, they'll offer some help to find the faulty part in the hopes you'll agree to a (very expensive) out of warranty call.

Can't remember for Servers, but on Desktops Flashing Amber means a power issue of some kind, so I'd try stripping the server as far as you can. Remove all the DIMMs, HDDs, riser cards etc so you basically just have the motherboard, 1 CPU and 1 PSU and a VGA cable connected. If the fault changes, start adding parts back one at a time till you find the culprit. Try swapping the CPUs and PSU if not, and also try disconnecting the fans one at a time as I have seen a duff fan cause a short in the past.

[shadragon]

Originally Posted by Dumber

Some servers might have an issue if the top cover is pressing on the RAM modules. Did you tried it with the lid open?

Run the machine both open and closed.

Swapped PS, stripped out to the bare essentials and unplugged the fans sequentially. Same thing.

Looks like I'll have to get a DRAC card or involve Dell at this point. ~sigh~

Thank you all.

[RicklesP]

We run 1850s at the moment, and I think you're looking at a missing core function. No beep because there's nothing to execute the BIOS instructions at power-on. If you remove all but 1 RAM board and CPU and try a restart, you should get something. If not, it's the CPU or mainboard. And a DRAC won't help you if there's no processor activity, 'cause the BMC has to have something to talk to.

[biggles77]

Considering what you can buy them for on eBay, it might be an idea to get one there and use this one for parts. http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_trks...+1850&_sacat=0

Hope you have a nice sound proof room because the fans make a terrible noise. Also, I don't think you can run VMs on them as they are not virtual capable.