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SGI Fuel General Maintenance

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SGI Fuel with side panel removed (Rules666)
A Fuel with its side panel removed: power supply top left, system board, DIMMs and processor heat sinks in the centre, drive cages right, graphics module and its blue fan housing at the bottom (Rules666, CC BY-SA 4.0)

The Silicon Graphics Fuel needs less routine work than older SGI systems, but its power supply and its environmental monitoring decide whether it keeps running. SGI's Hardware User's Guide lists the parts an owner may change and how to change them; the power supply and system board are not on that list.[1] The information on supplies and batteries below comes from owners on the IRIXNet forums.

Environment

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Physical environment (SGI Table A-1)
Item Specification
Operating temperature 5 to 35 °C up to 5000 ft; 5 to 30 °C from 5000 to 10,000 ft
Non-operating temperature −40 to +60 °C
Relative humidity 10 to 80% operating; 10 to 95% non-operating; no condensation
Heat dissipation 1075 BTU/hour
Mains 100 to 240 V AC, 50 to 60 Hz, 7.0 to 3.0 A
Weight 42 lb (19 kg), base system

[2]

Preparing for service

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  1. Log out, then press the power buttons on the workstation and the monitor.[1]
  2. Disconnect every cable from the rear, noting where each one goes, and remove any padlock from the locking loop.[1]
  3. Loosen the two captive thumbscrews on the side panel, pull the panel towards the rear, swing its top edge away from the enclosure and lift it off the bottom edge.[1]
  4. Lay the system on its right side for access to the internal parts.[1]
  5. Wait five minutes after power-off before touching anything inside: SGI warns that the heat sinks on the system board get hot enough to burn.[1]
  6. Wear the antistatic wrist strap, with its copper foil attached to a bare metal part of the chassis.[1]

To close up, stand the system upright, remove the wrist strap, hook the groove in the bottom edge of the side panel onto the enclosure, swing the panel up, slide it forward and tighten the thumbscrews.[1]

SGI's list of customer-replaceable parts covers the DIMMs, hard disks, removable media drives, PCI boards, the exhaust fan, air duct, PCI and graphics fan housing, hard disk fan, chassis feet, front bezel and the switch and LED assembly. Everything else was a job for an SGI field engineer.[1]

Memory

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The four DIMM sockets are numbered 0 to 3 and form two pairs. Fill at least one pair, always fit DIMMs in pairs, and keep both DIMMs of a pair the same size; SGI's example is that if DIMM 0 is 512 MB, DIMM 2 must be 512 MB too. The system will not run with no DIMMs fitted.[3][1]

  1. Remove the system board air duct.
  2. Pull up the latches at the ends of the socket and lift the DIMM out; store it in an antistatic bag.
  3. To fit a DIMM, stand the latches upright, remove any plastic blank, line the notches up with the socket and press the DIMM down until the latches close.
  4. Refit the air duct.
  5. After power-on, check the memory size under System Manager, Hardware and Devices. If it is wrong, check that each DIMM is upright and fully seated and that each pair holds two DIMMs of the same size.

[1] The DIMMs are the same type as those in the Origin 300, Origin 3000 and Onyx 3000.[3] Raion once cured a Fuel's memory fault by cleaning the DIMM sockets.[4]

Disks and drives

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The three internal hard disks must be set to SCSI IDs that match their positions:[5][3]

Internal disk SCSI IDs (SGI 007-4565-002)
Position SCSI ID
Lower drive bay, bottom slot (system disk) 1
Lower drive bay, top slot 2
Upper drive bay, bottom slot 3

The ID jumpers are at the rear of the drive; earlier Fuel drives were jumpered at the front, so check every drive when adding one.[5] The disks connect through a special SCSI cable available only from SGI, and SGI says not to fit any other SCSI cable.[3] Disks in the lower cage are held with 6-32 screws no longer than 3/16 in; longer screws damage the drive.[1] The lower drive cage is hinged and swings out of the chassis after its two screws are removed.[3][1]

Cooling and environmental monitoring

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The Fuel is cooled by a 120 mm rear exhaust fan, a 60 mm disk drive fan, an air duct over the processor, system board and memory, and a fan assembly for the PCI and graphics boards. The power supply has its own fan.[3] SGI's support note gives the fan numbers the L1 uses and their part numbers:[6]

Fuel fans (SGI support note sg1130)
L1 fan Position SGI part number
FAN 0 Exhaust 013-3474-001
FAN 1 Hard disk 013-3475-001
FAN 2 PCI (upper fan of the three in the PCI and graphics housing) 013-3473-001
FAN 3 XIO 1 (lower front fan of the three) 013-3473-001
FAN 4 XIO 2 (lower rear fan of the three) 013-3473-001
FAN 5 Power supply 060-0140-005 (the supply itself)

The system switches itself off if any fan runs below 80% of its nominal speed, any temperature sensor reaches 70 °C, or any voltage moves 20% from nominal.[7] The L1 env command lists each fan's warning limit and current speed. jwhat confirmed that the supply fan reading is real by stopping that fan by hand, at which point the L1 showed 0 rpm.[8]

Leave environmental monitoring switched on. Raion warns that the Fuel's cooling depends on it to scale the fan speeds, and that running with it disabled has burnt out VPro graphics boards.[9][10]

Power supply

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Four different supplies were fitted: NMB 430 W units (SGI 060-0140-004 and -005), a Hipro 460 W unit (060-0140-007) and a Sparkle 460 W unit (060-0202-001).[8] SGI's 2002 guide gives the outputs of the 430 W supply as 45 A at 3.3 V, 27 A at 5 V, 16 A and 18 A on two +12 V outputs, 0.6 A at −12 V and 3 A of +5 V standby.[2]

Owners regard the original supplies as the Fuel's weak point. jwhat passes on Hamei's experience of four failed supplies before an adapter became available, and weblacky's view is that Fuel supplies fail much sooner than those of other SGI systems.[8] Owners take two routes:

  • Recap the original supply. megaimg's Sparkle unit had about half its capacitors bulged; see SGI Fuel Capacitor Replacement Guide.[8]
  • Fit a standard ATX supply through an adapter board, which rearranges the connector and supplies the fan-speed signal the L1 expects. weblacky warns that a retail supply of the same make and model as an SGI unit is not a drop-in replacement, because SGI's versions are modified.[8] The adapter's instructions, as weblacky relays them, are to connect the 3.3 V and 5 V leads first and check the readings with the L1 before connecting the 12 V processor lead.[4]

Batteries

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Two parts on the system board hold their own lithium cells:[11][4]

  • A Dallas DS1742W-120 holds the L1 controller's settings and clock. Its cell is sealed inside the chip, and the Fuel will not start if the chip is faulty or missing. cz7asm found working chips hard to buy, and several he received had dead or missing cells. He built a replacement board of the same size and pinout that takes a coin cell, and measured its standby current at 1.3 µA.[11]
  • A real-time clock with a SNAPHAT battery cap. When weblacky's Fuel lost its PROM settings at every cold start, a new SNAPHAT cap cured it, though he found it harder to snap on than expected.[4]

SGI's warning is that the battery can explode if replaced incorrectly, and that it must be replaced with the same or an equivalent type.[12] See Battery Explosion, Capacitor or Corrosion Damage.

Front bezel and door

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To remove the bezel, take off the side panel, pull out the tabs that hold the bezel's left edge, swing it to the right until it is at right angles to the chassis, and lift it away. To refit it, engage its four right-hand tabs in the slots on the right of the chassis and swing the left edge in until the tabs catch.[1] Separating the grey inner frame from the red bezel, for example to clean the perforated metal grille, is awkward because the light-bar lens holds it; cascatino eased the plastic near the bottom of the lens and slid the frame down.[13] The front door latch often breaks; indigofan and weblacky both had broken ones.[4]

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References

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  1. ↑ 1.00 1.01 1.02 1.03 1.04 1.05 1.06 1.07 1.08 1.09 1.10 1.11 1.12 1.13 SGI, 007-4480-001, chapter 4, pp. 45-108. Preparing for service, side panel, heat sink warning, wrist strap, Table 4-1 customer-replaceable parts, DIMMs, drives and screws, bezel removal.
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 SGI, 007-4480-001, appendix A, Tables A-1 and A-2, pp. 120-122. Environment and power supply specifications.
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 Silicon Graphics, Silicon Graphics Fuel Visual Workstation Hardware User's Guide, 007-4480-001, February 2002, chapter 3, pp. 31-41 (File:SGI Fuel Visual Workstation Hardware User's Guide (007-4480-001).pdf). DIMM rules, drive cages and SGI SCSI cable, cooling system.
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 weblacky, Raion, jwhat and indigofan, "The start of a LONG Fuel repair thread...", IRIXNet forums, October 2021 to January 2022, forums.irixnet.org/thread-3185.html. ATX adapter connection order, SNAPHAT battery, DIMM socket cleaning, door latch.
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 Silicon Graphics, Silicon Graphics Fuel Internal SCSI ID Jumper Settings, 007-4565-002, 2002, Table 1 (File:SGI Fuel Internal SCSI ID Jumper Settings (007-4565-002).pdf).
  6. ↑ SGI support note sg1130, "Locating Fan location by FAN Number on SGI FUEL Workstations", 2008, in the Internet Archive collection HPE Documentation - Silicon Graphics & IRIX Troubleshooting Documentation.
  7. ↑ SGI, 007-4480-001, chapter 5, p. 110. Environmental fault monitoring thresholds.
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 8.2 8.3 8.4 megaimg, jwhat, weblacky and others, "SGI Fuel PSU Replacement Options or Service the Original", IRIXNet forums, November 2021 to March 2022, forums.irixnet.org/thread-3233.html. Supply types, failures, recapping, ATX adapter, fan monitoring test.
  9. ↑ Raion and weblacky, "Dead Fuel", IRIXNet forums, October 2021, forums.irixnet.org/thread-3175.html. Environmental monitoring chips and the risk of disabling monitoring.
  10. ↑ Raion, "SGI Fuel doesn't turn on", IRIXNet forums, February 2026, forums.irixnet.org/thread-4810.html. Do not run with monitoring disabled.
  11. ↑ 11.0 11.1 cz7asm, jwhat and others, "DS1742 NVRAM Chip Replacement", IRIXNet forums, January 2022, forums.irixnet.org/thread-3360.html.
  12. ↑ SGI, 007-4480-001, appendix B, "Lithium Battery Statement", p. 147.
  13. ↑ cascatino and gr_osview-1.8.5, "sgi Fuel front bezel disassembly", IRIXNet forums, 2018 to 2026, forums.irixnet.org/thread-130.html.


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