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BCM450 Boot Sequence 2

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exsmogger

exsmogger

Vendor
Oct 23, 2002
5,243
US
I have a BCM450 with a peculiar power-on sequence. Upon powering on the system fans run for about 5 seconds and then stop. After another few seconds the fans start again for another 5 seconds and then stop again. After another few seconds the system powers up and boots normally. I have connected to the serial port and see no output on the screen until the third cycle. There are no alarms on the system. I have tried a brand new power supply and a new RAM stick with no change in this power-on sequence. The system runs perfectly and a reboot operates normally.

I am presuming that the equivalent of BIOS on the main board is checking voltages, detecting hardware, etc. before the bootloader starts. Is this normal, or is there some way to tweak the initial flash settings to change the behavior of the fans?

Brian Cox
Georgia Telephone
 
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I had a couple of BCM 450 systems that did odd things. We traced it to the small circuit board that sits in the middle of the BCM 450 chassis that connects all the other boards together. We reckon the soldered joints weren't a sound connection and when warmed up, they went H/R. Normally the issues are with the power units and a BCM 400 power unit is often better than the newer 450 ones.

Firebird Scrambler

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

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My main PC does this but only one stop not two.


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I've also read of this peculiarity on Windows and Linux PC's. Some say it's normal behavior depending on the BIOS, others say it's not. I don't think it's the small circuit board as I recently had a customer's base tray that was acting the same way, but when I put my base tray in the same unit it booted up normally. I will try resoldering the connections on the small board and see what happens.

Brian Cox
Georgia Telephone
 
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The solder connections are actually on the base tray side of the connector. I put a thin layer of solder flux on the solder connections and then hit both sides with my hot air nozzle. I just plugged it back into the BCM450 and it booted up normally. Thanks for the suggestion Firebird.

Brian Cox
Georgia Telephone
 
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That's what I call a little bit of Impact Engineering!. It's a poor design flaw on the 450 range. This explains why the BCM450 randomly reboots when there is no reason why.

Firebird Scrambler

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

Website = linkedin
 
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Firebird, it reminded me of how the Ethernet and the port jacks were surface soldered on the Norstar CallPilots. I can't tell you how many of these I came across with the jacks broken off, often taking the circuit traces with them. As you wrote, a very poor design. Planned obsolescence?

Brian Cox
Georgia Telephone
 
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