I Spent Days Fixing This IBM Server. The Problem Was Embarrassing
This IBM Netfinity 3500 should have been an easy project.
It was a classic late-1990s business server, exactly the kind of machine I love working on, and the plan was simple: get it running properly and install Windows NT Server.
But almost immediately, it started behaving strangely.
The BIOS settings didn’t seem to make sense. The floppy drive caused confusion. The processor speed looked wrong. The SCSI controller seemed suspicious. Every time I thought I had found the problem, the machine gave me another contradiction.
For a while, I thought this server had several different faults.
It didn’t.
The real answer was much smaller, much simpler, and much more embarrassing.
This is the full troubleshooting story of the IBM Netfinity 3500 a vintage business server that beat me for longer than I care to admit
TimeStamps
00:00 Why the Netfinity 3500
00:46 Inside the Chassis
01:03 Power On
01:37 Reseat CPU and RAM
02:30 First time in the BIOS
03:30 Replacement CPU
04:07 Cache Detected
04:40 SCSI Hard Disk
05:40 SCSI BIOS
06:20 IBM ServerGuide CD
07:57 Disk Write Error
09:00 Replacement Floppy Disk
09:41 Winging it
10:25 No Network Card in NT
11:29 Chassis Documentation
12:48 DIP Switch
14:00 Reverse Switch
15:09 IBM Diagnostic Floppy