Alright, so I am currently working at my college's lab trying to figure out what exactly is the cause of this blade's issues. It was donated to us (private college) and whomever donated to us said they wiped all data from the hard drives and we could do with it what we wanted to. I attempted to put Red Hat 9 on it to use it as a test server for some labs for students but it froze multiple times, no luck. Decided to try and put Windows Server 2003 on it and it froze, once again no luck. I ran Memtest86 to see if it would diagnose anything and sure enough it did, within the first three seconds the test froze saying unexpected interrupt - halting CPU0.
Okay, I had four sticks of 512MB ECC RAM in the blade, tried it with only two, and I guess the way the motherboard works, you can only boot the server if you have a stick of RAM in either DIMM1 and DIMM2 or DIMM3 and DIMM4 (obviously you can have all four slots filled). Otherwise POST beeps out 'memory error!' I have done MANY tests trying to diagnose if one stick will make a difference or not, below are some of the results I've gotten from the tests. I divided a piece of paper into 4 slots and put a stick of RAM in each one to give it a number so I wouldn't lose track.
Stick 1 and Stick 2 in DIMM1 and DIMM2 (Respectively)
-Unexpected Interrupt - Halting CPU0 (Test #2 failed at 16% with four errors)
Stick 1 and Stick 2 in DIMM3 and DIMM4 (Respectively)
-Unexpected Interrupt - Halting CPU0 (Test #2 failed at 15% with two errors)
Stick 1 and Stick 3 in DIMM1 and DIMM2 (Respectively)
-Unexpected Interrupt - Halting CPU0 (Test #2 failed at 16% with four errors)
Stick 1 and Stick 3 in DIMM3 and DIMM4 (Respectively)
-Unexpected Interrupt - Halting CPU0 (Test #2 failed at 15% with two errors)
Etc... for Stick 1
Stick 2 and Stick 3 in DIMM1 and DIMM2 (Respectively)
-Unexpected Interrupt - Halting CPU0 (Test #2 failed at 16% with four errors)
Stick 2 and Stick 3 in DIMM3 and DIMM4 (Respectively)
-Unexpected Interrupt - Halting CPU0 (Test #2 failed at 16% with four errors)
Stick 2 and Stick 4 in DIMM1 and DIMM2 (Respectively)
-Unexpected Interrupt - Halting CPU0 (Test #2 failed at 16% with four errors)
Stick 2 and Stick 4 in DIMM3 and DIMM4 (Respectively)
-Unexpected Interrupt - Halting CPU0 (Test #2 failed at 16% with three errors)
Stick 3 and Stick 1 in DIMM1 and DIMM2 (Respectively)
-Unexpected Interrupt - Halting CPU0 (Test #2 failed at 15% with one error)
At first I thought it was something to do with the DIMM banks, the first few tests seemed that DIMM1 and DIMM2 would return fours errors and half at 16% and DIMM3 and DIMM4 would return two errors at 15%. At this point I am not sure what else to do as far as diagnosing this issue. I do not have any similar RAM sticks laying around. Any help on this is greatly appreciated.
Blade Specs:
Dell PowerEdge 1750
2GB (4x 512MB) 184-Pin ECC RAM
3x 74GB SCSI HD's
2.4GHz Intel Xeon Processor
