Way back when Raptor Computer Systems was doing pre-orders for the microATX Blackboard POWER9 system, I put in a pre-order. Since then, I’ve had a few life changes (such as moving to the US and starting to work for Amazon rather than IBM), but I’ve finally gone and done (most of) the setup for my own POWER9 system on (or under) my desk.

Everything came in a big brown box, all rather well packed. I had the board, CPU, heatsink assembly and the special tool to attach the heatsink to the board. Although unique to POWER9, the heatsink/fan assembly was one of the easier ones I’ve ever attached to a board.

The board itself looks pretty much as you’d expect – there’s a big spot for the CPU, a couple of PCI slots, a couple of DIMM slots and some SATA connectors.

The bits that are a bit unusual for a micro-ATX board are the big space reserved for FlexVer, the ASPEED BMC chip and the socketed flash. FlexVer is something I’m not ever going to use, and instead wish that there was an on-board m2 SSD slot instead, even if it was just PCIe. Having to sacrifice a PCIe slot just for a SSD is kind of a bummer.

• 

• 

One annoying thing is my DIMMs are taking their sweet time in getting here, so I couldn’t actually populate the board with any memory.

Even without memory though, you can start powering it on and see that everything else works okay (i.e. it’s not completely boned). So, even without DIMMs, I could plug it in, and observe the Hostboot firmware complaining about insufficient hardware to IPL the box.

Yep, out the console (via ssh) you clearly see where things fail:

--== Welcome to Hostboot hostboot-3beba24/hbicore.bin ==--

  3.03104|secure|SecureROM valid - enabling functionality
  6.67619|Booting from SBE side 0 on master proc=00050000
  6.85100|ISTEP  6. 5 - host_init_fsi
  7.23753|ISTEP  6. 6 - host_set_ipl_parms
  7.71759|ISTEP  6. 7 - host_discover_targets
 11.34738|HWAS|PRESENT> Proc[05]=8000000000000000
 11.34739|HWAS|PRESENT> Core[07]=1511540000000000
 11.69077|ISTEP  6. 8 - host_update_master_tpm
 11.73787|SECURE|Security Access Bit> 0x0000000000000000
 11.73787|SECURE|Secure Mode Disable (via Jumper)> 0x8000000000000000
 11.76276|ISTEP  6. 9 - host_gard
 11.96654|HWAS|FUNCTIONAL> Proc[05]=8000000000000000
 11.96655|HWAS|FUNCTIONAL> Core[07]=1511540000000000
 12.07554|================================================
 12.07554|Error reported by hwas (0x0C00) PLID 0x90000007
 12.10289|  checkMinimumHardware found no functional dimm cards.
 12.10290|  ModuleId   0x03 MOD_CHECK_MIN_HW
 12.10291|  ReasonCode 0x0c06 RC_SYSAVAIL_NO_MEMORY_FUNC
 12.10292|  UserData1  HUID of node : 0x0002000000000000
 12.10293|  UserData2  number of present, non-functional dimms : 0x0000000000000000
 12.10294|------------------------------------------------
 12.10417|  Callout type             : Procedure Callout
 12.10417|  Procedure                : EPUB_PRC_FIND_DECONFIGURED_PART
 12.10418|  Priority                 : SRCI_PRIORITY_HIGH
 12.10419|------------------------------------------------
 12.10420|  Hostboot Build ID: hostboot-3beba24/hbicore.bin
 12.10421|================================================
 12.51718|================================================
 12.51719|Error reported by hwas (0x0C00) PLID 0x90000007
 12.51720|  Insufficient hardware to continue.
 12.51721|  ModuleId   0x03 MOD_CHECK_MIN_HW
 12.51722|  ReasonCode 0x0c04 RC_SYSAVAIL_INSUFFICIENT_HW
 12.54457|  UserData1   : 0x0000000000000000
 12.54458|  UserData2   : 0x0000000000000000
 12.54458|------------------------------------------------
 12.54459|  Callout type             : Procedure Callout
 12.54460|  Procedure                : EPUB_PRC_FIND_DECONFIGURED_PART
 12.54461|  Priority                 : SRCI_PRIORITY_HIGH
 12.54462|------------------------------------------------
 12.54462|  Hostboot Build ID: hostboot-3beba24/hbicore.bin
 12.54463|================================================
 12.73660|System shutting down with error status 0x90000007
 12.75545|================================================
 12.75546|Error reported by istep (0x1700) PLID 0x90000007
 12.77991|  IStep failed, see other log(s) with the same PLID for reason.
 12.77992|  ModuleId   0x01 MOD_REPORTING_ERROR
 12.77993|  ReasonCode 0x1703 RC_FAILURE
 12.77994|  UserData1  eid of first error : 0x9000000800000c04
 12.77995|  UserData2  Reason code of first error : 0x0000000100000609
 12.77996|------------------------------------------------
 12.77996|  host_gard
 12.77997|------------------------------------------------
 12.77998|  Callout type             : Procedure Callout
 12.77998|  Procedure                : EPUB_PRC_HB_CODE
 12.77999|  Priority                 : SRCI_PRIORITY_LOW
 12.78000|------------------------------------------------
 12.78001|  Hostboot Build ID: hostboot-3beba24/hbicore.bin
 12.78002|================================================

Looking forward to getting some DIMMs to show/share more.