Getting an Arima HDAMA Rev G up and running

[ZorroTheFox]

Hi there,

 

I've got this server I bought on craigslist like 6 months ago, that I have a little more time to try to get working.  Whenever I plug it in and power it up, it gives a flatline beep, and doesn't stop unless I hold down power to turn it off, or unplug it.  I've tried two types of RAM, both of which are listed as workable on every website I can find about the tower, so I don't think that's the problem.  I also got a port-80 card which is supposed to help diagnose, but the numbers it read were ambiguous and not documented, so I'm not sure what to think.

 

I've heard that updating the BIOS is a popular way to fix problems, so I'm considering trying that.  I found a great thread

http://forums.mydigitallife.info/threads/20603-Arima-HDAMA-and-HDAMB-Motherboard-BIOS-Fixes

for listing the BIOSes, but I don't know how to update mine.  Does anyone know how I would update the BIOS on this?  My hard drives keep failing, I'd love to have unRAID working!

[ZorroTheFox]

It's a nice case, and I bought all these drives, and a controller card for it...  Do you think I could get away with only throwing the MB in the garbage?  Any recommendations for one?

[Kaygee]

Take everything out apart from a single CPU (you may need to re jumper for single CPU mode), I mean everything you have plugged in (keyboard, mouse, memory, VGA card, etc...) apart from speaker if is plugin type! Try powering on the system. IF you are still getting a single beep check cmos status jumper is correct. Verify all jumpers are correct. Especially the jumpers like halt on kb error (not sure your system has this but the dell versions do).

 

Check PSU is man enough though dual opterons suck power like crazy 500W should be a starting point. Swap CPU (assuming its a dual CPU one).

 

RTemove the board from the system so you have it one the bench (non conductive!!!) retry.

 

Still getting one long beep then sorry game over.

 

If your getting memory beeps (1-3-3-1 from "memory" no pun intended) then CPU is good, bios is good. Put single stick of RAM in slot 7 retry. Put single stick of RAM in slot 8 retry. Plug in the K/B only does keyboard initialize? If yes then proceed if not get another K/B. If you cant get here then throw it away.

 

Next hook up the VGA.

Set the bios to halt on all errors. Reboot. See what happens and proceed with caution!

Next plug in one item at a time and hard reboot each time.