New 2895 System Freezing Up Issues

Gents -

I've just put together a new system with all new parts. It's a compute node of a small cluster so it was meant to do nothing but crunch
numbers. It consists of:

2895 Board
2 x Opteron 252s (E-stepping) w/OEM heatsink/fans
8 x 512MB Corsair Reg. ECC PC3200
Antec Neo HE 550W PS
80 GB Seagate SATA
Sony DVD-ROM
Mitsumi Floppy
EVGA GF 7300GS PCI-E Card

Suse Linux 10.0

The system went together without problems as did the OS install. I did a quick memory test after the install and it found no problems. But
after about one day the system suddenly started freezing at random times and continued to do so. If I let it sit idle it would be fine. After
one freeze up the HD was corrupted beyond repair and I had to do a re-install of the OS.

After re-installing of the OS all seemed to be fine, but during it's first use as a compute node it froze up about 10 minutes into the
computation. Tried is again and several minutes into the computation it froze up. I quickly checked the CPU temps in the BIOS hardware monitor
section and they seemed fine.

Then all heck started breaking loose. I made some seemingly minor adjustments in the BIOS and could not get it to boot - it just would spit
some random characters to the screen and freeze. Had to re-set the BIOS to get it to boot. Then it started freezing up when I was in the BIOS.

I ran another memory test, but this time I let it run for a while. All was going well when the software reported an "unexpected interrupt" and
froze up. I've had bad memory modules in other boards before and never suffered this type of error when checking the memory or had the BIOS
freeze up on me.

BTW I've got another 2895 system running just fine with Suse 10.0 and the same BIOS revision

Is this a bad MB or should I do things like:
- re-install the CPUs
- re-install the DIMMs (or swap out DIMMs to see if it makes any difference)
- re-install the video board
- swap PSUs

Since it's crashing in the BIOS set-up I doubt it's a memory problem. Any suggestions before I call Tyan and try to work things out with them?

Thanks -

John

J. Hinkey wrote:
> Gents -
>
> I've just put together a new system with all new parts. It's a compute node of a small cluster so it was meant to do nothing but crunch
> numbers. It consists of:
>
> 2895 Board
> 2 x Opteron 252s (E-stepping) w/OEM heatsink/fans
> 8 x 512MB Corsair Reg. ECC PC3200
> Antec Neo HE 550W PS
> 80 GB Seagate SATA
> Sony DVD-ROM
> Mitsumi Floppy
> EVGA GF 7300GS PCI-E Card
>
> Suse Linux 10.0
>
> The system went together without problems as did the OS install. I did a quick memory test after the install and it found no problems. But
> after about one day the system suddenly started freezing at random times and continued to do so. If I let it sit idle it would be fine. After
> one freeze up the HD was corrupted beyond repair and I had to do a re-install of the OS.
>
> After re-installing of the OS all seemed to be fine, but during it's first use as a compute node it froze up about 10 minutes into the
> computation. Tried is again and several minutes into the computation it froze up. I quickly checked the CPU temps in the BIOS hardware monitor
> section and they seemed fine.
>
> Then all heck started breaking loose. I made some seemingly minor adjustments in the BIOS and could not get it to boot - it just would spit
> some random characters to the screen and freeze. Had to re-set the BIOS to get it to boot. Then it started freezing up when I was in the BIOS.
>
> I ran another memory test, but this time I let it run for a while. All was going well when the software reported an "unexpected interrupt" and
> froze up. I've had bad memory modules in other boards before and never suffered this type of error when checking the memory or had the BIOS
> freeze up on me.
>
> BTW I've got another 2895 system running just fine with Suse 10.0 and the same BIOS revision
>
> Is this a bad MB or should I do things like:
> - re-install the CPUs
> - re-install the DIMMs (or swap out DIMMs to see if it makes any difference)
> - re-install the video board
> - swap PSUs
>
> Since it's crashing in the BIOS set-up I doubt it's a memory problem. Any suggestions before I call Tyan and try to work things out with them?
>
> Thanks -
>
> John

Locking up in the bios, that's bad... I assume you installed the
motherboard yourself; how did it go onto the standoffs? Any weird
flexing or possibility of a fastener having been reefed down onto a
trace? Something you might want to try, pain in the ass though it may
be, take the cover off and loosen all the motherboard fasteners to make
sure there is no flexing or intermittent shorts, then boot it
up again and hope for better.

If you were going to try reseating stuff, I'd try the CPU's first, then
swap through the ram 1 gig at a time. Then the other things you
mentioned. I'm assuming of course that there were no relevant log
entries like kernel panics, etc...