Took T610 out of service for a planned hardware upgrade. Been managing it via iDRAC flawlessly for 3 years. Once on the bench there was no on-board video signal. I tried 2 different working monitors. At boot time the monitor registers a signal at first, but at the time it should post the memory test the monitor goes into power save mode. So I accessed it via RAC and configured the BIOS for an external video card, a 1xPCIe, with no problems. Booted to a Win7 on an SSD and installed 5 or 6 different firmware upgrades via Dell Command 2.0. Since I need a working RAC I switched the BIOS video settings back to internal.
Well -, now I don’t have internal video nor does the RAC ping any more. I figured that the firmware reset the iDRAC’s fixed IP to its default, so I also tried default 192.168.0.120. I also removed reset the BIOS via the on board jumper. The front panel reports the RAC IP as how I configured it before the firmware upgrades. I re-seated the iDRAC6 Enterprise adapter and the single CPU and all DIMMS.
I have a second CPU and DIMMS and additional drives that I have not installed yet. And I just checked that the 3 year warranty ended December 2014.
What am I missing? And thanks in advance for any help.
Volker