RE: *** ADMIN: Hardware upgrade status

["Chuck Lewis" <clewis@xxxxxxxxxx>]

WOW David - sometimes you just gotta LOVE computers, eh ? Not...

What a nightmare. Didn't Murphy know that it was after 5 and he shouldn't be
bugging you ?

Keep us posted and good luck !

Chuck


-----Original Message-----
From: David Gibbs Sent: Thursday, February 13, 2003 4:47 AM
 
Folks:

Unforunately, the hardware upgrade is NOT going well.

The new system arrived yesterday and, while I was transplanting the 
hardware, I noticed that the PCI slots for the devices were not the same as 
the old system.

Turns out that they implemented a new standard for PCI hardware ... one 
based on 3.3 volts as apposed to 5 volts.

Well, the end result is: the scsi card and raid controller that protect the 
data on the system are not compatible with the new system.  I'm not even 
sure I can find a SCSI card that supports 50 pin SCSI 2 devices. :(

Obviously this is not acceptable ... so I called Dell and got an RMA to 
return the system.  I then transferred the main components of the server 
back to the old hardware.

Murphy, being the optimist that he is, decided that he wasn't done with me 
...  now the OLD hardware failed.  I could not get video sync and there 
were some troublesome beeps on power up.

I did the standard troubleshooting steps, swapped memory around, removed 
cards for a bare configuration, nothing seemed to work.

It was almost 9pm by this time, so I decided to transfer the components 
BACK to the new computer (which I figured would probably work) and brought 
the system up.  Luckily it did work, and the system came up with few issues.

I have to review my options at the moment to see what the best course of 
action is ... I may have to use one of my other systems to run midrange.com 
until I can find a viable replacement for the new hardware.

david