Intel Pentium III Xeon 900MHZ / 2MB TPR issue - Servers

Resolving The Problem

Source
RETAIN tip H174035

Symptom
The system hangs or blue screens while running high I/O stress applications.
 
Affected configurations
The system might be any of the following IBM xSeries servers:

• An xSeries 370, type 8681, model 3RX
• An xSeries 350, type 8682, model 6RY
• An xSeries 250, type 8665, models 8RY or 81Y

NOTE: Affected systems are shipped prior to September 1, 2001.

The system is configured with the following options:

• xSeries 370 900MHz/2MB upgrade w/PIII Xeon, option part number 19K4637, replacement part number (FRU) 06P6333
• xSeries 350 900MHz/2MB upgrade w/PIII Xeon, option part number 19K4633, replacement part number (FRU) 24P3576
• xSeries 250 900MHz/2MB upgrade w/PIII Xeon, option part number 19K4635, replacement part number (FRU) 23P1421

Solution
A very limited number of Pentium III Xeon 900MHz with 2MB L2 cache processors are affected. The affected part has a manufacturing date code prior to work week 35 of year 2001. Any parts with work week 35 and after of year 2001 are not affected.

The work week information is located on the processor cartridge's dynamic mark area.

Example: A processor with work week 14 of 2001 will appear as following: (Where x could be any number or character.)

900/100/2M
x114xxxx-NNNN (country)

If you have a Pentium III Xeon 900MHz with 2MB L2 cache processor with a manufacturing date code prior to work week 35 of year 2001, order a FRU replacement per the part numbers listed in the "Affected configurations" section of this tip.

NOTE: FRU stock has been purged.

Additional information
This symptom is caused by a marginal signal quality within the Task Priority Register (TPR) of the processor. Only Pentium III Xeon 900MHz with 2MB L2 cache processors are affected.