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 Can not boot System x3550 M4

Yuval Yuval's profile image
Yuval Yuval posted Mon May 19, 2025 03:06 PM

Hey all,

Hoping that I'm posting this in the right place, as I'm new to this forum.

I'm pretty okay with computers, just never had a proper server before, so this is new grounds for me.

Recently, a friend gifted me an old server of his - the System x3550 M4. It collected dust at his place, but it used to work.

I tried booting it up, but I'm getting no video output (tried both the front and back VGA ports). The Light Path Diagnostics has 2 orange/ember lights turned on - Config + HDD.

Looking inside the chassis, I can see these lights:

  • STB PWR - constant green.
  • RTMM Heartbeat + IMM2 heartbeat - blinking green.
  • RAID daughter board - 2 constant red lights, can't tell what's written on them.

Fans seems to be working fine, and I tried resitting the 2 SSDs in different places.

At this point, with my lack of experience I'm out of ideas on what else to look for. Would love any advice or idea.

Thanks in advance,

Yuval.

Nigel Griffiths's profile image
Nigel Griffiths IBM Champion posted Fri May 23, 2025 06:41 AM

Hi,

The AIX operating System runs on the POWER processor based servers and does not run on this Intel processor based computer.

I am so sorry, but you are not in the right forum.

This computer seems to have been announced in 2012 - so ancient history.

I would Google for installation and maintenance guides, diagnostics and problem docs.

See if you can find out how to do a factory reset.

Try taking out parts you don't need - they might be stopping the boot.

Good luck, N

Zaki Jääskeläinen's profile image
Zaki Jääskeläinen posted Mon May 26, 2025 01:05 AM

One common problem with RAID cards is that the battery keeping the cache alive has expired.

Zaki Jääskeläinen's profile image
Zaki Jääskeläinen posted Mon May 26, 2025 01:19 AM

Forgot to add: but expired RAID cache battery usually doesn’t cause failure to boot. It just becomes very slow as it’s running without the cache. 

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