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Getting Replacement Parts For Sun Clones?

Posted by timothy on from the for-want-of-a-nail dept.

Autoversicherung writes "Two of our production servers started to act up last week and after a few hours of testing and swapping in and out hardware we nailed it down to the power supply. Great, we thought -- probably the easiest part to get a replacement for. Was I wrong. The power supply was specifically made for Sun clones, and contains one standard ATX 20-pin and one EPS 24-pin connector to the motherboard. The original power supply is no longer in production, so far I haven't been able to dig up any suitable replacement for it. Am I able to modify a new PSU? I know how to use the tools required, I'm not sure what the implication are for things like 'separate voltage lines for each CPU complex' etc. The servers in question are EVU450 from Tritec, AFAIK clones of the E420R Sun server. The original Sun parts don't fit, though. Am I out of luck?"

2 of 47 comments (clear)

  1. Real Stuff by droyad · · Score: 4, Interesting

    This is one of the downsides of skimping on cheap hardware. The parts and support are just not there 3-4 years down the track. Thus us the advantage of the expensive Intel/Sun/IBM.

    I'm sure you can still get parts for IBM machines 10-20 years old.

  2. Re:Scaredy Cat! by alienw · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Do you want someone to be killed by blindly believing this statement?

    Even the biggest capacitor doesn't have enough energy stored in it to kill you. It could give you a nasty shock, but it's not particularly life-threatening (unless you have major health problems to begin with).

    The important statement is that it takes a lot of time for the capacitors do discharge.

    Unless the power supply was designed by monkeys with soldering irons, it should take no more than a minute for all the capacitors to fully discharge.

    Also, you don't need any special equipment or tools for working on an unplugged power supply. An isolation transformer is only necessary if you are poking inside a live one using grounded test equipment (such as an oscilloscope).

    Why the hell do various people keep propagating the same silly myths over and over? I guess you're one of those idiots that interpret warning labels literally. Either that, or you think you are l33t because you poked inside a power supply and didn't get killed. There are quite a few dangerous electrical things, but UNPLUGGED power supplies do not belong in that category.