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We lost a motherboard about a month ago. Another X7SB4-E. Ive seen the X10SLH-F board in these before. Just installed one in the dead server. It posts and proceeds to boot, but once it gets to the part where the UI comes up the screen goes black and intermittently flashes. I can see Dolby written in big letters when it flashes up. Doesn't do anything else. I can safely shut it down by pushing the power button so it appears to be booting. Any advise?
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What server is that? DSS200? Did you flash the "Dolby" BIOS on it? I suppose the "Dolby" you see is the BIOS logo? So it looks like the system is rebooting?
Try unplugging everything you can, leave the Motherboard, the RAM and the CPU. Does it post and is it stable? Then make a Linux USB stick and boot Linux from it. Does it work. If so, get a Dolby Install disk, install 4 random drives (store the other safely) and see if it installs the system and works fine.
Bottom line: proceed in small steps and try to remove most of the variables from the equation. You can also use MemTest to test the HW of a system without an OS. -
Its a ShowVault.. The system gets well past the initial boot screen. Once it boots up and gets to the cinelister screen is where the problem is.Comment
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Have you put an OS chip/SSD in there from another screen yet? I've seen every single one of those go bad in the "big box" Doremi servers such as yours. To a lesser extent, I've seen the USB HUB that it is screwed down onto go bad, so that would be my second suggestion.Comment
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I should have guessed from the "SV"...
What Brad says. But my advice stands, it's a big computer. You can test it as such. You don't need Doremi stuff for that.Comment
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Are you using the built-in screen oran external one? We had a simillar issue when weused an EB-USB because the resolution of th UI was too high and the built-in screen couldn’t cope.Comment
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A common failure mode for the DCP-2000's and Showvault's is the on-board SD card that servers as the OS boot drive. The units have a finite number of read/write cycles and you must have hit the magic number. I haven't ordered one recently but there were still available from Dolby the last time that I checked. I'm not sure if this part number is correct for your unit but the last one that I ordered was DCP2K-USB-SSD-02.Comment
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You can run it from a usb stick. Dolby can link to an image, you use Rufus to make it bootable and copy the image. This is a temporary fix as it uses one of the few usb ports.
Then replace the OS drive on the USB hub (order from Dolby) then install updates, their software is usually way out of date.
It may go to default addressing, I don't remember.Comment
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Have you followed dolby MB replacement procedure? Normally the upgrade from mb x7 to x10 is done along with the upgrade to 4gb of ram and the change of ssd to a new one with gold master (and dolby bios for x10). I'm not sure that all the steps are mandatory, but if you are having issues I would at least start with a new SSD (or with the emergency usb as already suggested) and checking if the ram used is compatible with new MBComment
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Missed the MB change. We bought a bunch of X7s on eBay so haven't used an X10. You should call Dolby for instructions and what's needed.Comment
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Figured I'd come back here and share what's going on so far. The X10 mobo in question came from a ShowVault that we punted about a year ago. It ended up at my house. It failed due to the SSD failing (A 4 GB InnoDisk) . I tore it down for spare parts. Since I had no use for this board, I took it to the theater to rebuild this one and kept the other parts. I've got a couple of X7 boards. Since the 4 GB disk upgrade is also deployed on the X7 boards this one should boot on a X7 as well (With the help of one of out techs informing me that the 2GB SSDs won't work with the X10). With this in mind I rebuilt a server here at home with the X7 board. I dug out this dead SSD and stuck it in there. Of course it failed to boot again. I already tried different hub cards thinking the same thing. I remember being able to get it to go once but that was it. I tried multiple times to do so but failed. Now here is where it gets weird. I yanked the disk and plugged it into my PC, fired up my friend Rufus and pulled a image of this SSD. I was expecting errors but the image creation went through without. So I grabbed a spare USB stick, one of those generic no name ones, and burnt this image onto it. I already assumed that if it was corrupted that it would simply just copy it the same way and fail to boot but I've nothing better to do. I plugged it into the internal USB port and started the server. To my surprise the server booted into CineLister with the same configs that were on the failed drive. I've cycled it multiple times and it still works. I'm still convinced there is bad blocks on the original SSD as it won't boot, but I'm mystified as to how I was able to copy it without corruption. The only thing I can think of is that when it's booting, it's putting more load on the flash chip causing it to break down. But copying does not do so. I've worked with computers almost all my life and this ones got me. I have yet to get to the theater to try this on the X10 boardComment
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Regarding the initial failure with the Supermicro X10 board: I personally never have seen one of those boards in a ShowVault. I'm not denying it will eventually work, but your trouble already isn't a good omen. First of all, are you trying to use the most recently software versions provided by Dolby?
I think the problem you're seeing is related to an outdated Linux kernel, that fails to detect the graphics chipset inside the newer Intel C226 chipset (~2013) v.s. the older Intel 3210 chipset (~2007). I've had similar issues before on embedded hardware, where the manufacturer would start bumping chipsets, but the driver code simply didn't detect the device signature and refused to load. I'm not sure how realistic it is to load custom kernels onto Doremi/Dolby ShowVault hardware though...
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