[Soekris] 5501-70 intermittantly fails to start with constant error light

[Rhys Frederick]

Hi,

I just recently received two new 5501-70 boxes and am a bit stumped as to
whether I'm doing something wrong or otherwise.

When booting these boxes, they regularly light both the power and error
lights but don't appear to do much else. After fiddling a lot to get a
console up and running (discovered the joys of getting a usb-serial adaptor
working reliably under BSD) i found the only thing outputed was a single
garbled character. I disconnected and connected the power several times, and
suddenly there was the boot sequence. Read some of the issues from the site
and decided worth upgrading the BIOS, so upgraded to 1.33b. Rebooted and
fine, power cycled and again the constant error lights. This seems to be the
case on both machines. One of them has a CF card in it, the other doesn't.
At this point haven't tried changing a single BIOS parameter.

So far have tried the boxes with 2 different power supplies (1.2A 12V
regulated switch-mode and 2.5A 12V regulated switch-mode) and 2 different
serial consoles (cu and goSerial2). Also tried shorting pins at jp9 but that
doesnt seems to have any effect other than causing goSerial2 (the serial
console) to disconnect.

FWIW, on the occasions when I did get the one with the CF card to boot, it
would start loading the OS and then start spitting junk out to the console,
but I'm guessing that is probably another separate issue. Including the
output at the bottom.

cheers,

rhys


POST: 012345689bcefghips1234ajklnopqr,,,tvwxy
-snip-
comBIOS ver. 1.33b 20080501  Copyright (C) 2000-2008 Soekris Engineering.

net5501

0512 Mbyte Memory                        CPU Geode LX 500 Mhz

Pri Mas  SanDisk SDCFH-1024              LBA Xlt 993-32-63  1001 Mbyte

Slot   Vend Dev  ClassRev Cmd  Stat CL LT HT  Base1    Base2   Int
-------------------------------------------------------------------
0:01:2 1022 2082 10100000 0006 0220 08 00 00 A0000000 00000000 10
0:06:0 1106 3053 02000096 0117 0210 08 40 00 0000E101 A0004000 11
0:07:0 1106 3053 02000096 0117 0210 08 40 00 0000E201 A0004100 05
0:08:0 1106 3053 02000096 0117 0210 08 40 00 0000E301 A0004200 09
0:09:0 1106 3053 02000096 0117 0210 08 40 00 0000E401 A0004300 12
0:20:0 1022 2090 06010003 0009 02A0 08 40 80 00006001 00006101
0:20:2 1022 209A 01018001 0005 02A0 08 00 00 00000000 00000000
0:21:0 1022 2094 0C031002 0006 0230 08 00 80 A0005000 00000000 15
0:21:1 1022 2095 0C032002 0006 0230 08 00 00 A0006000 00000000 15

 3 Seconds to automatic boot.   Press Ctrl-P for entering Monitor.

comBIOS Monitor.   Press ? for help.

> boot
Consoles: internal video/keyboard
BIOS drive C: is disk0
BIOS 639kB/523264kB available memory

FreeBSD/i386 bootstrap loader, Revision 1.1
(root at mb63.neon1.net, Sat Mar  1 18:38:30 CET 2008)
/kernel text=0x4b99a0 data=0x9e5f4+0x36090 syms=[0x4+0x5c850+0x4+0x748e4]
~???????x??`x???xx?x?x?xx?xxxxxf??fx`???????`x?????f??~??H?????????x??`x???xx?x?x?x?x?x?xxx?x?x?xxx??x?x?xx??x?x?xxx?x?x?xx?x?x?x?x?x?x?x?x?x?xx??x?x?x?xx??x?x?x?xH???`Jfx????xf?`??x?xx~??fxf???x???????~?x?xx??????x??????x???x????x??`??x????????~fx??H?x????????`x???x?x????x??~f???xx~??xf???????x?xxf??fx`???????`x`??f?`??~????????H?x????????`x??x?x???f??????x??xx`x~x???~x`f?xxxxxx~x?x~fxx??fxxxxx??xxxx?????`???x???f????x???f~?x?f??????????????????xx????????f???x?xf?????~??f???????`‘‡?f????f?`???x`???xxfxxxx?????–‰????x?x?xxxxxx??x??–…???`??xx???f?x?~
and so on......
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