NAM Beeps

[Karlg]

Help!

I got an urgent call from an associate who just started working at a new job five weeks ago. He said that their voicemail stopped working. After trying to decipher the problem over the phone, I drove 75 miles to have a look.

The system is a MICS 6.0 with a NAM 2 4.1 Rel. 8, Fiber connection. On power up, the NAM emits five beeps in the pattern BEEP...BEEP BEEP BEEP...BEEP. This happens within seconds of applying power.

I tried to log in to check the codes, but all attemps at FEATURE 9--- result in a "Inactive Feature" being displayed. I also tried to log in through the NIC card and got nothing but a link light.

Looking through the vents on the NAM, I can see a dispay of "88".

Any ideas on what is going on? I suspect a harddrive failure.

Any help is appreciated as I have been asked to take over the maintenance of this system. It was installed about five months ago by a vendor who is in dispute with the client and offers no support at all.

Thank for any help.

 

[exsmogger]

If it was just a hard drive failure the NAM would still POST, which takes a minute or so. Error codes in the 80's denote a hardware problem. You unfortunately have a major hardware failure, possibly bad RAM, or worse, a motherboard failure. You could look inside the NAM to see if any connectors have worked loose, but you will probably need to send it out for diagnosis and repair.

Brian Cox

http://www.jandjcommunications.com

 

[Karlg]

That makes sense. The beeps come so quickly after power up that there isn't time for post.

I did not put a monitor on the unit to watch what was going on. I may do that just out of curiosity.

Thanks for the input.

Karl Gray

 

[salo0920]

Reseat the MEMORY chip(s) on the main board.

Sounds like 1 or more is either shot or if you are lucky, just needs to be reseated.

 

[sprucegrover]

Is the floppy drive not the primary boot device on a NAM? If the floppy is bad, the boot sequence will not get past this step in the boot-up and will protest (beeping). Check the status light on the floppy drive and see if the NAM is even trying to read the device before going top the hard drive

 

[Karlg]

salo0920, I haven't opened a NAM before. What type of chips are they using? It would be nice to have some spares on hand when I go there.

sprucegrover, I didn't see any status light on the floppy (not flashing). Do you have a document of what the beeps are indicating? If I had that info, I could go straight to the problem.

I will be back in the area on Monday so I can deal with this again.

Thanks for the input.

Karl

 

[sprucegrover]

The status light (read/write led) is on the floppy drive front panel. If you dont see the led light briefly as the o.s. sees the drive during boot-up change out the drive and try again. Or put a floppy in the drive and see if the light comes on as the drive reads the disc.
I have had this happen 2x in the last year.

 

[salo0920]

Sprucegrover,

Different version NAMs use different memory. You will either find the sims, sips, or dims on either the mother board (near the back) or on the processor card (later versions).

If you have ever worked on a PC before, you should recognize it (or them) when you see them.

The beeps are a pretty good sign that that is the problem.

R u sure noone has been in there lately, perhaps trying to up the memory?

The nams I have worked on had sims with 9 across (they are WITH parity) I have seen them both double sided and single sided ranging from 8 MB to 32MB.

Good Luck to you.

 

[Karlg]

Its fixed!

After scouring the globe for a ISA video card, I could finally see what was going on.

The first bank of memory was bad. The processor would not even go into POST. No video was available until the memory was removed. When the second bank of memory was moved to the first slot, the NAM completed POST and went to the desktop. The unit was reinstalled at the customer site and it booted sucessfully.

I don't know if there will be any negative reaction to the memory being cut in half (16MB vs 32MB), but, the client is happy for now. When I find the right memory, I will upgrade the machine to its original configuration.

Thanks to all for the help.

Karl Gray

 

[exsmogger]

Unless you're running ACD 16MB will be OK. 32MB is better, of course.

Brian Cox

http://www.jandjcommunications.com