Xeon Phi Co-processor Testing, part 2

I purchased ~140 7-series Xeon Phi Co-processors from a reseller who got them from a laboratory that was liquidating them. I tested them in a similar manner to part 1, but with an ASUS Z10PA-D8 instead of an HP DL380p server. Unfortunately, work stations don't have cooling. That's why I designed and tested the fan adapters, which are now for sale on eBay.

New single Phi adapter design. The blowers are a little longer,
but they're flatter than the axial fan single Phi adapters.

It took about 5 days to test them all, primarily because of how long it takes the ASUS computer to boot. I couldn't figure out how to make it boot faster unfortunately.

Ghetto test setup

By the end, I had the rhythm down:

1. Install power cables
2. Install fan adapter
3. Plug in Phi
4. Boot
5. Check lspci. If this fails, shutdown, put card in for parts box.
6. If pass lspci, run firmware update bash script. This has all the commands to update firmware and reboot.
7. Once rebooted, run post firmware update bash script. This starts mpss, runs miccheck, etc.
8. Wrap up card and put in working box.

I tried to test two at once with a dual Phi setup. It wasn't too difficult to get them installed with the fan adapter I designed, but handling two Phi's at once was unwieldy, so I went back to doing one at a time.

Some cards prevented computer power on, which was kind of scary...means there was a bad power fault somewhere. Some would be recognized by lspci, but would fail a firmware update...these usually had the F2 post code error, which is related to the memory system. I couldn't figure out how to fix that. A bunch just weren't recognized by lspci. But the majority were in good working condition, so I got lucky there.

Here's the homelabsales post and table if you're interested in buying one or more. I managed to sell about 40 of them in the ~1.5 weeks I had in FL, mostly broken ones to a museum in Oregon, haha. I put them in storage bins inside so they won't corrode in the FL humidity. I'll be listing them again a few months from now.