Re: RAID controller failure, or?

New battery arrived today, and I installed it in the 2748 card. Card went back in the system, and well things aren't looking that good.

Something is definitely wrong with the entire DASD subsystem; all of the individual disks show 00 as the first two of their serial, although none of their serials actually start with 00. Attempts at initializing individual disks results in an I/O error. I also attempted to examine the disk surface, and the read errors add up incredibly quickly before any percentage complete occurs.

I even attempted to reclaim IOP cache storage; with the same results.

I suppose *all* of the disks could be bad; but that seems unlikely. I think I've read about the disk cage backplane going out; I'm sure that could cause some strange issues.

Breaking down the issue, it's got to be one of a few things, right? RAID controller, cabling, backplane, or disks?

The tape drive still works great, but that's on it's own controller as it's an external unit.

I guess it's time to find some more replacement parts.

Clay


On 01/19/2014 12:34 PM, Clay Carley wrote:

I pulled the card out, and found a Sanyo cordless phone battery in there
with a second label saying it was an IBM part, with the correct part
number. So, I found a battery on ebay (new) for $25 and free shipping
and ordered it.

I was attempting to read the hex dump, but haven't gotten too far with
that yet.
http://carleynet.net/familypictures/view_photo.php?set_albumName=album70&id=IMG_20140119_090724_260

Viewing the full size pic (it's quite large) makes it easy to see what's
listed. I'm hoping that something will decode to "failed cache battery".

Now, I do have the old card from the system still, a 2741. Is it worth
throwing that back in until I get the battery for the 2748?

Thanks,
Clay

On 01/19/2014 06:11 AM, Clay Carley wrote:

Hi Jack,

Thanks for the reply. I was hoping that these symptoms pointed to a bad
cache battery; but seeing 27489010 I was kind of freaked out that
something more had failed.

I purchased the card on ebay last February, and the condition was
"seller refurbished"; which could mean that they pulled it from a scrap
heap, cleaned it up, and sold as is. So, who knows how old that battery
really is.

I guess the next step is to pull the side off and see about a new battery.

Thanks,
Clay

On 01/19/2014 03:50 AM, Jack Kingsley wrote:

I am guessing you have a bad cache battery. I had a similar problem a long
time ago, got a new system, did some work on it, then let it sit for
several months. How old were the batteries that were in it.


On Sat, Jan 18, 2014 at 7:44 PM, Clay Carley <cbc@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

To add to this, upon trying to install the LIC to the last remaining
disk, I get:
B6005120

http://pic.dhe.ibm.com/infocenter/powersys/v3r1m5/index.jsp?topic=%2Fp7eai%2FB6005120.htm

Clay

On 01/18/2014 04:34 PM, Clay Carley wrote:

Greetings,

Sadly I've had my 9406-170 off for a few months, as I haven't had a lot
of spare time to work with it.

Today I figured I'd finally IPL it and start working with it again.
Unfortunately there seems to be a failure inside the box, and I've spent
the afternoon trying to track it down.

The system is dog slow. I'm attempting to IPL from tape (again), and
it's still sitting there. Earlier I tried restoring the LIC, however it
complained that the 2 disks in the mirror set were missing, and I wasn't
seeing the proper number of disks after pulling those two. At this
point I have 1 disk in the box, and that didn't seem to help.

First IPL failed with code 27489010, which after looking up, doesn't
sound good. "2748 xxxx It may indicate a system bus failure."

Will a dead cache battery cause this incredibly dreadful performance?
Or, is it possible that my RAID card is suffering some failure that the
system hasn't quite recognized yet?

Thankfully, I have good backups in any case.

Thanks for any tips,
Clay Carley

--
This is the Midrange Systems Technical Discussion (MIDRANGE-L) mailing list
To post a message email: MIDRANGE-L@xxxxxxxxxxxx
To subscribe, unsubscribe, or change list options,
visit: http://lists.midrange.com/mailman/listinfo/midrange-l
or email: MIDRANGE-L-request@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Before posting, please take a moment to review the archives
at http://archive.midrange.com/midrange-l.