photos:Bringing the Predator back to life

I decided to test the boards of the Predator rack one by one in a known-good 4D/420 VGX deskside. That way it would be easier to isolate a faulty board. The 10span VGX works (no "pinstripe of death", whee!). So does the IO3 and the MC2 (64MB ram is installed).

When I got the Predator, it had 4 (dual) IP7 CPU boards installed. It turned the first cpu on the first board was faulty. This one vital when booting the system. The I discovered that between the 4 CPU boards, two have PROM chips labeled 070-0401-007 and 070-0400-007, and the other two have PROM chips labeled 070-0401-009 and 070-0400-009. The first is PROM version 3.3, the latter is 4.0.1 All IP7's are the same board revision (part#).

All boards must have the same PROM revision or they don't work together

I had one more faulty CPU in another IP7. In the end I mixed and matched untill I had 2 IP7 boards with the 4.01 PROM chips and 4 working CPU's, and 1 board with the 3.0 PROM revision and 2 working CPU's. Below, the quad CPU config is running, the third CPU board is standing by the side, and the two dead CPU's (actually, SM7 daughtercards) are on the deskside.

Predator guts
installed in 4D/420 desksideDate: 2006:10:09 19:30:47
It works!
IO3, 2*IP7, MC2 and 10 span VGXDate: 2006:10:09 19:35:35
It's alive
All boards, this time in the Predator rackDate: 2006:10:23 21:03:00
Created with the tool album generator from Dave's MarginalHacks on Sat Jan 8 20:53:56 2011