Y888099 wrote:Having to deal with an old prototype for a business project is a "no-go" for me since there are too probability of being stopped by a dead/defective hardware or simply a device whose behavior might be unexpected. [...] So, what was/is the goal?
The goal is to preserve this system in a functional state.
I'm well aware of what a prototype is. I do software development for a hardware development company so my desk is usually full of proto or modified hardware. This system was under my desk at work for ~ 9 years, and most of that time it was used for software development. It served me well.
The problems with the Dallas chips are well documented. This system had some I2C related problem where the L1 couldn't "see" the CPU anymore, so it refused to power up. It sat there for two years maybe until the company stopped IRIX support entirely and donated the (dysfunctional) system to me. I replaced the CPU, but when I tried to power it up it gave me more DS1780 grief:
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ALERT: Error reading the NODE 1 temperature sensor, no acknowledge
ALERT: Error reading monitor NODE 1 interrupt status 1: no acknowledge
ALERT: Error reading monitor NODE 1 interrupt status 1: no acknowledge
ALERT: Error reading the NODE 1 temperature sensor, no acknowledge
ALERT: Error reading monitor NODE 1 interrupt status 1: no acknowledge
ALERT: Error reading monitor NODE 1 interrupt status 1: no acknowledge
ALERT: Error reading the NODE 1 temperature sensor, no acknowledge
ALERT: Error reading monitor NODE 1 interrupt status 1: no acknowledge
ALERT: Error reading the NODE 1 temperature sensor, no acknowledge
I have some of these chips but the pitch of the pins is really at the limit of what I can do by hand, and there's one between the PCI slots that's even harder to rework. Maybe I'll ask the company that assembles our products for a favor. Instead, I put in the "NextGen" mainboard and now it works again -- with the supposedly non-functional CPU.