AlphaServer ES40 Service Guide

This document is the Compaq AlphaServer ES40 Service Guide, intended for service providers and self-maintenance customers. Published in July 1999, it provides comprehensive information for understanding, troubleshooting, configuring, and maintaining Compaq AlphaServer ES40 systems.

The guide is structured into eight chapters and five appendices:

• System Overview (Chapter 1): Describes the architecture, physical enclosures (tower, pedestal, cabinet), I/O ports, control panel, and internal components such as the system motherboard, CPU cards (Alpha 21264), memory (DIMMs), PCI backplane, remote system management logic (RMC, SPC), power supplies, fans, and storage.
• Troubleshooting (Chapter 2): Offers a systematic approach to diagnosing problems, including diagnostic tables for various issue categories (power, console access, boot, operating system errors), and introduces service tools and information resources like Compaq Analyze, loopback tests, SRM console commands, and firmware updates.
• Power-Up Diagnostics and Display (Chapter 3): Details the system's power-up sequence, the diagnostics performed by the RMC and SROM firmware, and explanations of power-up displays and error messages (including beep codes). It also provides procedures for force-loading firmware via floppy and updating RMC firmware.
• SRM Console Diagnostics (Chapter 4): Catalogs and explains numerous SRM (System Reference Manual) console commands used for diagnostics, testing hardware components (e.g., exer, memtest, nettest), managing FRU information (buildfru, show fru), and viewing error logs (more el, show error).
• Error Logs (Chapter 5): Focuses on interpreting and analyzing error logs, particularly with Compaq Analyze, covering fault detection and reporting mechanisms, different types of machine checks and environmental errors, and how to view, save, and delete error frames from Windows NT systems.
• System Configuration and Setup (Chapter 6): Guides users through configuring the system, including selecting consoles, displaying hardware configurations, setting environment variables for Tru64 UNIX/OpenVMS and Windows NT, configuring automatic booting, changing boot devices, running AlphaBIOS utilities, and setting security passwords. It also provides detailed rules for configuring CPUs, memory, PCI cards, and power supplies.
• Using the Remote Management Console (Chapter 7): Provides an in-depth look at the RMC, explaining its monitoring and control functions, various operating modes (Through, Snoop, Soft/Firm Bypass), terminal setup, connecting to its command-line interface, configuring remote dial-in and dial-out alerts, and resetting to factory defaults.
• FRU Removal and Replacement (Chapter 8): Offers step-by-step procedures for safely removing and replacing Field Replaceable Units (FRUs) such as power supplies, fans, hard drives, CPUs, memory DIMMs, PCI cards, the system motherboard, and other key components, emphasizing safety precautions and post-replacement steps.

The appendices provide supplementary reference material, including a full list of SRM console commands, details on system jumpers and switches, the layout of the Dual-Port RAM (DPR), descriptions of various internal system registers, and a specialized procedure for isolating failing DIMMs.