X9DAi startup beeps

[stubbs]

so i have recently heard about startup beep error codes.
my X9DAi is beeping a lot at startup. its practically undeterminable how many beeps there are because they are pretty rapidly occuring. However, the computer has been startup up after that.

But after a few weeks the computer stopped starting up (and beeping) the fans turned on but nothing happened. After a few restarts the computer then beeped again and started up.

Lately I havent had much luck of restarting several times. The computer just wont start up and beep. I tried removing RAM models as i thought maybe one or more of them are faulty. I did not manage to narrow it down to which RAM would be faulty because sometimes the computer would start up with one module removed, and sometimes not...

I am totally puzzled

 

[sebastien]

Hello Stubbs,

The pace of beeping should not matter much I believe. I was reading the manual for another Supermicro board(X9SRA) and beeping code change depending on the length of a beep ie: 5 shot beeps = this, 5 short beeps+1 long beep= that, or 1 long beep = this.
I would suggest to refer to your motherboard manual and go the troubleshooting section. If you do not have your motherboard manual anymore then check on supermicro.com for the X9DAI and you may have a manual download link around the "memery tested, HDD tested, download latest BIOS firmware...." links.

It may just be the battery... who knows.... therefore check the manua and troubleshooting section.

 

[SheaK]

I just built a dual dodeca core liquid cooled system on the X9DAi board and ended up with some intermittent behavior as you describe. There is only a beep code in the motherboard manual for "no video" and another for a memory error.

I've now proven and solved the issue on my box, Bios revision 3.0a (which is something like software 3.8something). This is the current version of BIOS on this motherboard, and previous boards may not experience this behavior if my theory is correct.

What your system may be doing:
It is beeping once for each USB item, including hubs and internal USB headers, when it activates each device. I get eight beeps - one for my keyboard, mouse, flow sensor, front USB panel, wireless audio transmitter, monitor USB hub, AMBx light 1, and AMBx light 2. Then I get a different pitched BEEP which indicates "Booting" according to the manual. This beeping is incredibly fast and not evenly paced because each USB device had a different turn-around time when responding to the motherboard's activation (depends on the complexity of the device, perhaps).

I can unplug any number of these, and the beep count will change (unplugging my monitor USB hub reduces the beep count by 5). Also, if you watch your USB devices carefully, they'll come up at slightly different times during this beeping period.

I believe this may be some sort of debug code that was left in the production build. It appears to be a non-error.

Good luck,

Shea