BCM400 Hard Drive Fails - What All Will Still Work? 2

[Factotum247]

The HDD in our BCM400 recently failed, due to a power surge that blew the power supply.
I know, not a good sign for the rest of the BCM, either.
Until mgmt can figure out what they want to do, what functions will the BCM400 still be able to do?
I can't seem to find a clear answer in the manuals I have.

I know voicemail and ext. only dialing are gone. But it seems like transfers and logging into my admin set is also gone.

 

[Firebird Scrambler]

Lets get to basic's

If the power unit has blown on a BCM 400, Then you can usually tell if you only see one LED on the front panel although I've known even that isn't working. You will have a dead system. Nothing will work.

I've known that other techs have replaced the power unit for a BCM 400 with one from a BCM 450 (and a BCM 400 to a BCM 450 etc) and also using a power unit from a typical desktop computer as the power units often used the same power connectors.

If the hard disk has failed, then the phone system tends to keep on running in basic mode with essentially means that nothing IP will work. This means no voicemail, IP access, SIP / H323 trunks or IP phones etc.

This should give you some tips on where to go, but personally I'd open up the BCM from the front and remove the Motherboard and clean it up as it will probably be quite bad. Reconnect everything on the board.

If possible, connect the hard disk via a USB to IDC cable to check that the hard disk is OK. Don't change any files if it is OK.



Firebird Scrambler

Nortel & Avaya Meridian 1 / Succession & BCM / Norstar Programmer

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http://somertel.com

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[Factotum247]

Thank you, Firebird.

Yes, had a tech in to swap in a ps from a spare BCM400 that we have. I'm not sure of the state of that spare. Wish I had the time to set it up and test it out.

Will the current BCM400 operate without an HDD in it at all? I'm thinking I could pull the HDD after hours and try to grab an image of it, then put that image on the HDD from the spare unit, and put that HDD into the one that's in the rack.

My other thought is to pull the HDD and now-working power supply from the running BCM400. Grab image of the HDD and put it on the HDD in the spare. Pull the working PS from the running BCM400 and put it back in the spare, then commission the spare and pull the current BCM all together.

I seem to recall reading somewhere, though, that the license file is tied to the BCM? So the image off the current BCM would have a license that wouldn't work in the spare BCM?

Or, I may just wait and see what mgmt wants to do so I don't lose what little we've already got.

 

[curlycord]

If the HD is not working then there not much you can do.
Stick it in the Freezer for an hour maybe then quickly try to image it....done that before and it worked.

Otherwise you could buy one then restore from your backup....you did not mention what release of 400 you have.

The License it tagged to the system ID.


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[Firebird Scrambler]

If your hard disk is an old Maxtor 20 gig IDE drive, then a trick that has worked is to remove the circuit board on the hard disk with 4 Torex screws and replace it with another working one.

Firebird Scrambler

Nortel & Avaya Meridian 1 / Succession & BCM / Norstar Programmer

Website =

http://somertel.com

linkedin

 

[Factotum247]

curlycord - Having a backup would have been nice. That option wasn't available to me for, well, let's call it administrative reasons.

FirebirdScrambler - Interesting. We may have to give that a try.

I've farmed this out to a couple telcom service companies to try to come up with a low cost solution. There's underlying reasons other than financial why we can't upgrade the system, so we'll have to see what they come up with.

Thank you both for your time and help on this. I do appreciate the worth of your experience and training and am humbled that you share it so freely.