[time-nuts] Symmetricom experts?

[Wojciech Owczarek]

Hi Chris,

This is a Linux box - an x86 box in fact. As far as I remember they even
have VGA pin headers on the board inside. Boot it up with the serial
console active and see if you get anything meaningful, but I doubt it. I
opened one up for the same purpose last year but I don't have it to hand
anymore and I don't remember what the exact platform was. Open it and you
may be able to connect to it by other means than the serial port - which I
found to be of little use for troubleshooting. It could be something as
trivial as the box stuck in fsck prompt because of a corrupted FS. They do
have dual partitions, but I'm not sure whether they can actually fail over,
or is the second partition used only during f/w upgrades.

Is the statement about copy protection actually confirmed? I would try
finding someone with another S200 and copying the CF card first. And yes,
they will want ££££,££s, and it got worse since the Microsemi acquisition.
I have witnessed multiple S2xx deaths. Usually PSU fail, but death on power
cycle is not uncommon either.

Thanks,
Wojciech


On 24 September 2015 at 09:46, Mike Cook <michael.cook at sfr.fr> wrote:

> Hi Chrs,
>   Not an expert… but usually computer systems give some indication of why
> a boot is failing on the systems console. The S200 is probably a unix based
> system as it has utilities such as SSH. TELNET. HTTP. So you could try
> connecting an RS232 terminal , or telnet’ing to its console server if it is
> managed by one. Then power it on again and see what the symptoms are. If
> there is no output, then it is a probably hardware problem and you will
> need to either have it serviced, or dig into it yourself . I doubt however
> that it is user serviceable.
> There are troubleshooting steps in the user manual, so I suggest you look
> at those. If you don’t have the manual handy, see
> <
> http://iecitel.com/resources/ntp%20network/S250/SyncServer%20S2xx%20User%20Guide.pdf
> >
>
> Have fun
> Mike
>
> > Le 24 sept. 2015 à 09:21, G1FEF <lists at g1fef.co.uk> a écrit :
> >
> > Do we have any Symmetricom experts on this list?
> >
> > I've had a Symmetricom Syncserver S200 GPS+PPS with rubidium clock
> running for several years until we had a power cut and the UPS battery
> failed, on powering back up it won't boot at all.
> >
> > I suspect the flash is corrupt but they protect it in some way, so one
> can't just copy the o/s onto a new card, and the company want ££££'s to fix
> it for me!
> >
> > Thanks in advance,
> > Chris
> >
> >
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Wojciech Owczarek