We have in our school 12 DC-125’s attached to one Microsoft Multipoint 2011 Server running on a Dell R210 with an ATI Firepro 2270. This setup has been running for about 1.5 yrs.
The ATI Firepro 2270 failed in that heat had bent the heatsink on the graphics processor so much that it finally was lifting off the gpu. ATI has recognized this and have redesigned the heat sink for more surface area and better flow. That being said, I replaced the 2270 video card.
Then, when bringing everthing back up, one of the DC-125s had failed in that whenever it was plugged in, all main server processing power was being used by the bad DC-125. Is that how they fail? Anyway, I replaced the bad DC-125 and it now works as specified.
Question, have any idea why the DC-125 failed? Do you think the video card is related to the multifunction device failure? Do DC-125s normally fail like that in that they begin using all the server’s cpu power?
Thanks for posting here about your experience! It’s not very common for the DC-125 to fail in the way that you described, but it’s possible that there was an issue that was causing noise on the USB bus, which could explain why the server CPU was overloaded.
I’m curious what other symptoms there were, if any. Did the unit work but just consume too much of the servers resources? Or did it have other problems like no video or instability?
I think I might have misspoken. I was just informed the issue popped up again. I think I know the cause which was probably not the DC-125.
When the video card went bad, the bios reverted back to using the onboard video card. I put the new ATI Firepro 2270 back in place and changed the bios back to disabling onboard video.
What I did not check was the IRQ settings for USB. If they end up on the same IRQ as the video card, which is Dell default, then random failures start occuring. The BIOS IRQ must have went back to default settings as well.
I have seen this once before to which took many hours of troubleshooting as well as replacing usb hubs, multifunction devices, and changing all kinds of USB power settings to which none was the answer. The real answer was the IRQ conflict between the ATI Firepro 2270 and USB.
So, I will have to physically go to the school to change the BIOS IRQ settings. I am sure this is the issue.
I apologize for trying to pinpoint a multifunction device. They have all worked extremely well. It’s the Dell R210 issues to which is totally not supported to be running Microsoft Multipoint Server. I can’t understand why Dell continues to use the Matrox g200ew graphics card with late 1990’s technology.