Doremi Motherboards

[Devin McNamara]

Does any body know the reliability of these X7XBE main boards in these servers as they age. We have two units here that are not functional anymore. The tech that talked to our manager says the motherboard is bad. Now bear with me I am just starting to learn how this stuff works. I have a server on the bench and it is booted up with no errors. I probably won’t get much of anywhere without actually hooking it up to a projector. It was throwing errors about the IMB. I really have a hard time believing the motherboard is just bad. Usually my experience with motherboards is they either just work or not. What do you guys think?

[Carsten Kurz]

Seen as a full DCI server, 'non-functional' could be anything. I have rarely, if ever, seen Doremi motherboards die. Usually, it's a different problem with the Dolphin card, the IMB, the powersupples, the boot disc, etc.

- Carsten

[Marco Giustini]

As Carsten says. However if the server boots fine and reaches the GUI I’d agree the mobo looks fine but you won’t know until it’s actually hooked up to a projector as you say.

[John Thomas]

Might be worth changing the CMOS battery if the thing is old enough.

I have seen servers in truly awful conditions like tons of moisture, construction dust, salt, and/or oil in the air lose a motherboard, but that's about it.

Motherboard is something to blame if the thing won't even POST. And even then, power supplies, memory, and power supply backplane (in that order) would be the things I would swap if I can't get the thing to POST before I blame the motherboard. Rarely, a squirrely dolphin board will cause it.

If it will POST but not boot to a desktop, check BIOS settings including boot order, swap the ssd/cf card.

If it boots to desktop but things still no worky, reinstall the software package.

[Steve Guttag]

I've seen a fair share of Supermicro X7 series motherboards have issues...NIC issues, VGA output issues erratic operations. At this point, I agree with John to check the battery. They'll do quite strange things with a flat or going flat battery. Also, reseating memory sticks. Memory sticks can mess up how a motherboard performs and sometimes just reseating them will make all well.

[Marco Giustini]

In my experience, re-seating RAM on a dusty mobo will likely lead to issues. I am not saying you shouldn't re-seat them, just make sure you have good quality compressed air, an antistatic brush and some dry contact cleaner when you do so. Dust the motherboard (outdoor possibly), remove the sticks, blow air in the slots, brush/dust the sticks and plug them back again.
It's pretty common for the RAM sticks to refuse to work when you plug old ones in, you might need to try a few times - and use dry contact cleaner if nothing helps.

[Devin McNamara]

That is what I figured as well. Sadly they don’t take equipment cleaning as seriously as they should here. Quite a lot of dust packed into some of these fans it’s amazing they don’t break down more. I opened the front to one of our DCP-2K4 units here and the filter disintegrated just trying to get it out. They are all like this too. The server actually did boot and make it to cinelister. That was me of my first suspicions with it was a possibility of the ram just needing reseated. One of the other guys sent me a picture of what the screen looked like when it went down. It looks pretty strange to me. I wouldn’t be surprised that the lack of cooling might have done a number on the motherboards capacitors. Already had to replace some in the power supplies. So.. I will attach the picture.

[Dave Macaulay]

The motherboards do die, as Steve says it's usually the VGA or NICs that stop working. Often just cleaning connectors and reseating them will revive a problem server but the electronics do fail.
I haven't found one where the Intel CPU has failed.
The X7 is obsolete and NLA new but a working used board might be found on ebay. They are a pain to swap with the way the internal wiring is all tied down.
Once a board is in, the Doremi BIOS should be installed. The server may work OK with whatever BIOS comes on a used board but I've been told that the desired version has more changes than just the Doremi splash screen. Running diags through the online analyzer will show a BIOS version error if it's not "right".
As chains go through their upgrade cycles and install series 4 projectors, there will be a lot of replaced servers on the used market.

[Jim Cassedy]

My experience with DoReMi DCP2000 motherboards has been the same as others have had:
Which is that when I've had a DoReMi "problem" - it's always been something other than the
motherboard. I had the memory battery die on one and when I replaced it (several years ago)
it ran fine once I re-input all the BIOS settings, which I easily got from Dolby®.

I know someone who had the little built-in touch screen monitor die on once once. He was
in a panic until I told him he could hook a regular VGA monitor up to the server and it would
work just fine. I got the manufacturer & part number off the dead screen, and was able to
find a replacement at some online surplus electronics place for less than $30.

Should a DoreMi motherboard ever actually "die" on you, there are almost always spares
available on e-bay. (I just looked & there are presently 3 listed today)

Or consider getting yourself a whole spare server. I was able to pick up a used DCP2000
for just over $2k from a closed cinema several years ago that I use at home.

[John Thomas]

The black X in the center of that screenshot is the X11 mouse cursor, which means it's booting into Debian but not getting far enough to load wdm (someone better with Linux can correct me here).

If it's getting that far, ftpd is probably running so you can drop the software package into /doremi/etc/rc.once and reboot to try and reinstall. Otherwise you should be able to ssh into it and accomplish the same one way or another.

If that doesn't work, boot from an EBUSB. If that works, you need to replace the ssd/cf card. If it doesn't, you likely have a hardware issue.


Last I checked (it's been a while though) you can purchase replacement dust filters from Dolby because yes they do eventually just crumble.

[Devin McNamara]

So I left the server on for the week. Got back to it just now and found that while cinelister was still running I wasn’t able to do anything else. The task bar at the bottom was gone and as was the title bar at the top of cinelister. This feels to me like the Linux version of “explorer.exe” crashing like in the old days of windows where it would take out the taskbar and cause the whole computer to destabilize. I was able to safely shut down the server and reboot so far it is well. I noticed a couple of SMART errors during the boot up mumbo jumbo. I will have to see if I can get a picture of that. I assume just some hard drives acting up. I decided to check through some logs and while I scrolled through a bunch of secure clock battery warnings I found two errors that happen to fit in the time frame of this problem. Both errors are under the class and type: health. The subtype is MemoryStatus. I will attach pictures of the errors for reference. It seems like to me this issue is related to the servers RAM perhaps?

[John Thomas]

You don't see that too often. Memory could be an issue.

Since you're able to boot fully now, the absolute first thing to do is to pull a Detailed Report and upload it to the Dolby Log Analyzer. This will tell you a lot about any errors and even give some advice as to the severity and what can/should be done. Pulling a Detailed Report is also the first thing Dolby will have you do if/when you open a case with them.

I highly recommend reinstalling the software package + hotfixes + VNC package.

[Devin McNamara]

Now I am assuming this is the export button we are talking about here? Forgive me I am still pretty new to how these work. I have been begging for months for them to let me work in this stuff. Ha ha.

[John Thomas]

Stick a usb flash drive in the front, open Diagnostic Tool, hit the Detailed Report button at the bottom. It'll generate the detailed report and then ask you where to put it. Select the usb drive and it will save it there.

[John Thomas]

Also if you google "ShowVault manual" the user guide as well as the field installer manual is available from the usual suspects. There is some useful troubleshooting stuff there but don't let it distract from the issues in front of you. I only mention the manuals because they will get you some familiarity with the system in general and why things are the way they are.