Dual Xeon-D

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andreathing

New Member
May 5, 2020
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It has two mini-PCIe which would be enough for me with those SFP+. I see it has an RJ-45 and I presume that's just for basic GigE away from the SFP+ and not for the BMC. Those USB-B connectors look interesting, but without knowing what they do and without some way to power cycle the system I can't commit to good money on a gamble.

I am in the UK and would take one if there was a known BMC.
I do not see any obious suspect for a BMC, but i contacted the seller and asked politely for a couple of hi-res pictures. Hopefully he'll respond and we'll find a nice little square with the aspeed logo somewhere.
 

Navy_BOFH

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Aug 2, 2013
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I do not see any obious suspect for a BMC, but i contacted the seller and asked politely for a couple of hi-res pictures. Hopefully he'll respond and we'll find a nice little square with the aspeed logo somewhere.
Seeing the picture with the BIOS stickers on the USB-B ports, I would have a suspicion that there is some sort of serial console on those ports. At least that is where my mind is going with how the stickers are strategically placed there and not just a random flat spot on the PCB.
 

fake-name

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Feb 28, 2017
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I just took a look at the picture and saw a JTAG connector for the FPGA. A good sign that this is super funky stuff.
I dunno, the weird Inventec board I picked up a while ago had piles of debug/JTAG headers, and basically didn't have any funky bits. It's always possible the hardware engineer just had a boner for playing with FPGA on board design day.

I agree that it looks like the mezzanine connectors are probably OCP mezzanine headers. They appear to be about the right size
 
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andreathing

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May 5, 2020
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The seller was kind enough to snap a few more pictures of the board. Nice guy but really not the best photographer :p

Anyway i asked him for a few detailed photos of the area near the rj-45 connectors hoping to find a trace of some sort of BMC, but no cigar. I even asked him for photos of the back of the board but it is basically bare PCB with the exclusion of a few caps an diodes.

There's one more far fetched possibility: since the FPGA on the board is quite big (it's a Xilinx Kintex 7, have no idea of the actual model number) maybe they implemented a stripped down BMC as a sof tocore. Highly improbable? Yes.

For anyone interested I'll attach all the usable photos i got.
 

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itronin

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Nov 24, 2018
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Could it be that those usb ports simply connect to a usb/serial adapter implemented in the xilinx? If I were making a ton of boards for some specialized no gui/headless operation why would I put in a vga head especially if they were running some embedded app or linux based environment? just thinking out loud here. if the price was a bit less I'd consider picking up two just to see what the heck is going on. may submit a low offer and see what happens.
 

andreathing

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May 5, 2020
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Could it be that those usb ports simply connect to a usb/serial adapter implemented in the xilinx? If I were making a ton of boards for some specialized no gui/headless operation why would I put in a vga head especially if they were running some embedded app or linux based environment? just thinking out loud here. if the price was a bit less I'd consider picking up two just to see what the heck is going on. may submit a low offer and see what happens.
This was exactly my train of thought.
I think if we want to have a shot at it the best idea would be to go for a "group buy" thing as we were discussing above and try to negotiate a quantity discount. I would be in if the price would be around 50 - 80 euro shipped (around 80 - 90 USD).

BTW: do you live in Europe?
 

BlueFox

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Oct 26, 2015
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Could it be that those usb ports simply connect to a usb/serial adapter implemented in the xilinx? If I were making a ton of boards for some specialized no gui/headless operation why would I put in a vga head especially if they were running some embedded app or linux based environment? just thinking out loud here. if the price was a bit less I'd consider picking up two just to see what the heck is going on. may submit a low offer and see what happens.
You don't need the something as expensive as the Xilinx FPGA to do that. If you look closely, you'll see that the ST3243EC ICs are RS232 transceivers (routed to the 8P8C connectors) and the SIL2104 ICs are USB-UART bridges (routed to the USB type-B ports).

One doesn't need a BMC or VGA output if a serial console is properly implemented. While I cannot speak as to this motherboard as I don't have one in my possession, here's a modern server I have that does that as an example:

 

itronin

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Nov 24, 2018
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This was exactly my train of thought.
I think if we want to have a shot at it the best idea would be to go for a "group buy" thing as we were discussing above and try to negotiate a quantity discount. I would be in if the price would be around 50 - 80 euro shipped (around 80 - 90 USD).

BTW: do you live in Europe?
I do not.

super interesting right? Guesing but looks like 1USB-B, 1 USB-A, 1 reset switch, 1 riser, 1 m.2 nvme, 1 1Gbe, 2xSFP+, 6SATA (III?), and an SFF-8643 (SATA III?) per node in a uATX-ish kind of size - lots of extra standoffs and scale is hard for me to judge - but could work.

I'm not sure about the earlier speculation of stratus-like lock-step execution but thinking there might be some kind of node interconnect going on in that xilinx - probably pcie speed maybe?

though looking at the D-1541 it has an LSI 3008 on it... wondering if that is actually shared between the two nodes and the 8643's are split just for symetric board layout?

anyway if this can be made to work as two separate compute nodes without extra bells and whistles - hey - could be nice little semi-high perf /HA pfsense box with built in 10gbe.


I purchased two OBO to play with and see what happens. Montreal to Denco. Might see these late next week.

acceptance was REALLY fast, offered $200CD each no counter - probably could have offered less.

Mentioned in the offer I was a STH member and was going to try and figure them out.
 

andreathing

New Member
May 5, 2020
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You don't need the something as expensive as the Xilinx FPGA to do that. If you look closely, you'll see that the ST3243EC ICs are RS232 transceivers (routed to the 8P8C connectors) and the SIL2104 ICs are USB-UART bridges (routed to the USB type-B ports).
You don't need it for sure, but since you have it on board it may be worth it to use every single gate. If it uses RS232 level shifting must be done outside the FPGA since that is a 3.3v max device.

Still I could be be utterly wrong and serial connections can be to talk to something else.
 

andreathing

New Member
May 5, 2020
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I do not.

super interesting right? Guesing but looks like 1USB-B, 1 USB-A, 1 reset switch, 1 riser, 1 m.2 nvme, 1 1Gbe, 2xSFP+, 6SATA (III?), and an SFF-8643 (SATA III?) per node in a uATX-ish kind of size - lots of extra standoffs and scale is hard for me to judge - but could work.

I'm not sure about the earlier speculation of stratus-like lock-step execution but thinking there might be some kind of node interconnect going on in that xilinx - probably pcie speed maybe?

though looking at the D-1541 it has an LSI 3008 on it... wondering if that is actually shared between the two nodes and the 8643's are split just for symetric board layout?

anyway if this can be made to work as two separate compute nodes without extra bells and whistles - hey - could be nice little semi-high perf /HA pfsense box with built in 10gbe.


I purchased two OBO to play with and see what happens. Montreal to Denco. Might see these late next week.

acceptance was REALLY fast, offered $200CD each no counter - probably could have offered less.

Mentioned in the offer I was a STH member and was going to try and figure them out.
My gut tells me that those are two nodes, I'm quite conviced despite it being an exotic motherboard it's not some super fancy high reliability system with lock step execution.

I'll be looking forward to hear what you find out when you receive it.
 
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itronin

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Nov 24, 2018
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You don't need the something as expensive as the Xilinx FPGA to do that. If you look closely, you'll see that the ST3243EC ICs are RS232 transceivers (routed to the 8P8C connectors) and the SIL2104 ICs are USB-UART bridges (routed to the USB type-B ports).

One doesn't need a BMC or VGA output if a serial console is properly implemented. While I cannot speak as to this motherboard as I don't have one in my possession, here's a modern server I have that does that as an example:
oh awesome! great detective work! so the answer is most likely usb heads on these then.

I'm not a hardware jockey so I was speculating on the Xilinx and I figured it was doing something else and so maybe the usb to serial adapter was there as an "extra" but from your observations its implemented separately which makes sense.
 

bob_dvb

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Sep 7, 2018
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You don't need the something as expensive as the Xilinx FPGA to do that. If you look closely, you'll see that the ST3243EC ICs are RS232 transceivers (routed to the 8P8C connectors) and the SIL2104 ICs are USB-UART bridges (routed to the USB type-B ports).

One doesn't need a BMC or VGA output if a serial console is properly implemented. While I cannot speak as to this motherboard as I don't have one in my possession, here's a modern server I have that does this
Thanks, very interesting.

I see the AMI Aptio V bios seems to support this function and I think the stickers said AMI bios. This application note for another board documents the function, but I don't see anything about Acpi or other power state control.


I am getting closer to interested.
 

BlueFox

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Oct 26, 2015
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Thanks, very interesting.

I see the AMI Aptio V bios seems to support this function and I think the stickers said AMI bios. This application note for another board documents the function, but I don't see anything about Acpi or other power state control.


I am getting closer to interested.
Pretty much any BIOS supports it if they enable it. Even motherboards with VGA can use it. Here's an 11 year old screenshot of mine from a very old Supermicro server:

 
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n17ikh

Member
Jul 12, 2019
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When I looked at these in March I came to the conclusion that those USB-B ports were probably serial console ports as well.
Looks like the seller has re-listed after getting them to power up: ASROCK AK-D1541 SERVER MOTHERBOARD FCBGA166 /W 2 X Intel Xeon CPU D-1541 *READ* | eBay
I did some amateur photogrammetry using the ddr4 slots as rulers and came up with approximate dimensions of 320x344 mm after correcting the perspective, which would put it slightly oversize for EATX (could be measurement error, though).
 

itronin

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Nov 24, 2018
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I did some amateur photogrammetry using the ddr4 slots as rulers and came up with approximate dimensions of 320x344 mm after correcting the perspective, which would put it slightly oversize for EATX (could be measurement error, though).
You're probably pretty close on the size. my estimate of uATX ish is way off. There's two m2.110 slots on the board and estimating using that comes up with an easy 300mm+ wide. My delivery estimate is June 5-8 right now. going to depend on CA post and customs.
 

Fritz

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Apr 6, 2015
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Can't wait for someone to actually get one and report back. :)
 

Sacrilego

Retro Gamer
Jun 23, 2016
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Hmm... Could that LED code be a Dr. Debug code? Error 53 would be a memory error.
I wonder what type of memory the vendor is using and if they've tested the memory on all slots.
 

andreathing

New Member
May 5, 2020
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Hmm... Could that LED code be a Dr. Debug code? Error 53 would be a memory error.
I wonder what type of memory the vendor is using and they've tested the memory on all slots.
I've noticed that in the picture only one DIMM slot is populated, the ones for the other CPU are completely unpopulated and only one EPS supply cable is plugged, but I've no idea if this is the cause of the error.
 

Sacrilego

Retro Gamer
Jun 23, 2016
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I've noticed that in the picture only one DIMM slot is populated, the ones for the other CPU are completely unpopulated and only one EPS supply cable is plugged, but I've no idea if this is the cause of the error.
If this is a dual node mobo, which I highly believe it is by looking at all the duplicate components it has, then both eps connectors should be used to ensure it has enough power.

The other thing I noticed is that there looks to be 2 M.2 slots, one per "node". If they're pcie, then potentially a video card could be used with an adapter to try and get some output.

I would've jumped on this if it wasn't so expensive. I'd even be willing to try and get it up and running for free just to have the chance to document it and then return it.