Apple Xserve 2009 dual quad core has no power on second CPU

The server works as a single CPU unit but I want it all to work. There are two LEDs on the main board to show power on each CPU. The LEDs for CPU two are not lit.

2009 Intel Xserve (latest). Dual quad core Intel Xeon, 12 gigs RAM, 900 GB SAS HD.
Reply to
Lucifer
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First check there are physically 2 CPU. Either on the board ans in the BIOS (and activated).

Reply to
Look165

There are, and two lots of RAM.

No BIOS. It's an Apple.

Reply to
Lucifer

The next step is determining if both CPUs are fed from the same source, or if there are two separate buck converters on the board for each. You might be able to see two identical converter circuits in the same proximity to e ach CPU.

Reply to
John-Del

Was this an ebay special?

Make sure you put a fresh battery in (probably cr2032), there may be no bios but it still has nvram for configuration settings, backed up by the battery.

A flakey battery (or dead) might screw things up quite a bit. On some Sun servers, the machine won't even power up.

One other thought, you said something about 12GB ram, kind of an odd amount.

I think that machine is picky about the type and what slots are used. You can use different sized chips but the pairs have to be matched.

On that machine the slots are arranged like this:

1 5 2 6 3 7 4 8

the ones in slots 1 and 2 have to be matched. (first pair) the ones in slots 3 and 4 have to be matched. (second pair) the ones in slots 5 and 6 have to be matched. (third pair) the ones in slots 7 and 8 have to be matched. (forth pair)

To make life simple, if you know for a fact you have 4 identical simms, just use them in 1-2-3-4 and leave 5-6-7-8 empty.

I'm not sure if the mixed sizes or placement will cause the led not to light on the one cpu but this is just basic troubleshooting.

Odds are it's "something else" including a bad cpu but the battery and simm placement is a good starting point.

-bruce snipped-for-privacy@ripco.com

Reply to
bje

I will check the battery and RAM placement. Thanks.

It has 6 x 2GB RAM cards. 3 for each CPU. Only 3 cards (6GB) show in System Profiler. I could have all 6 RAM cards for the one CPU but I'd really like to have both CPUs working.

Reply to
Lucifer

I've never seen one of those Xserves up close but have resurrected from the dead a few Sun servers. On Suns, the memory is more of a pool where is installed correctly, either cpu can grab as much ram as it needs, in other words, it's not dedicated to each cpu.

But who knows with apple.

I don't know if you have this or ran across it...

formatting link

but it seems to contain the hardware diagnostics for that thing, at least the part of it called AXD EFI.

There are other versions, 3x104, 3x106 but one of them should work.

As the other guy (John?) mentioned, there could be a pair of simm looking things that are called VRM's, usually one for the cpu, the other for the ram bank, 4 all together (2cpu, 2ram). You can usually swap the cpu ones just to see if the off-led follows to the other one. If so, you know what to look for.

I can't find a diagram of that thing anywhere so only taking a guess there.

They are socketed like the simms and the only reason for that is again, on the Suns, they are changed if the cpu is upgraded. I don't know if they go bad, never had a bad one.

Good luck.

-bruce snipped-for-privacy@ripco.com

Reply to
bje

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