Legend Processor Boot Behavior 2

[Commerco]

This is my first post here. As a lurker prior to joining, I found several great posts in this forum offering some solid advice and techniques, so thank you to the members who post such information here.

Background: When a Merlin Legend processor board is booting the status indicator reads 'c' and after the self test is complete, I believe the red led on the processor board should light. I know that behavior is true on a CKE3 and an earlier vintage processor I have.

To the question: Is this true on all Merlin Legend processors including the CKE4 and CKE5 based processor cards?

I just received a used CKE4 and it does not display this behavior. I'm hoping against my expectations that this card is not dead, but wanted to get some confirmation from more knowledgable members.

Thanks in advance.

 

[merlinman]

As you observed, they light up "C" indicating a COLD START as they are booting up.

If you install a FORCED UPGRADE Card, you will first see an "L", indicating Low Level Formating, followed by an "F", indicating a FRIGID Start.

I have one R4 Magix Processor I use IN MY LAB ONLY that ALWAYS shows the "F". I have no idea why.

Based on what you have described, it sounds like it is in trouble of some sort.

Once you power this thing up, can you do surrogate programming to it through the ADMIN port?

The only advice I would give is to double check all the little JUMPER BLOCKS with a known working module.

I have had some that failed due to someone messing around with those.

 

[tdaugirdas]

The red light on the processor simply means that a "permanent" error has been logged - and not yet erased. If you go into the maintenance menu, choose system, error logs, permanent - you will see the error or errors that have turned on the red alert light. If the errors are no longer relevant - you can erase them by pressing "drop" as each permanent error is viewed. "Dropping" the permanent errors will turn the red light off. A very typical error that turns the red light on is if the backup/restore card has been removed and or poorly seated - and the processor tried an autobackup Sunday at 2am - and the autobackup failed.

Tom Daugirdas,
President
STCG, Inc.
stcg.com

 

[Commerco]

Well, I really appreciate both responses. Since the red light is an alarm, rather than a "run" light as I had first thought, I could move on in debugging 101 (shows you how good I am at configuring, right? Silly me, I wanted to go straight into surrogate mode without checking the basics.) ;-)

It turns out that the processor itself does operate (operatable and responsive from the MLX20), but unfortunately the Admin port does not seem to respond. I don't think this is a baud rate issue or cable issue, so I think we have our answer.

Thanks very much for the quick responses.