Nortel 8190sm CPU dead?

[klawit]

Our 8100 Switch CPU is no loger functional. Sometimes it runs for a couple of minutes but stops silently. Switching works some minutes loger but stops then too.

I get some starting/loading messages over the console terminal but when it crashes it simply stops responding, no crash message appears. The control LEDs show some status, sometimes a third PSU although only two are installed sometimes a load of 100%. Is there a way to recover from this? Is the memory module a manufacturer specific one or can I replace it with some PC style memory? I think the switch will not run without the CPU at all, is that right? OS Version is 2.0 something, I don't know right now.

Any help would be appreciated.

 

[DaddyOfThree]

You may have a loop in your network that is bringing the switch CPU to it's knees. You could probably connect a laptop to any of the switch ports and run WireShark to see if there are any loops/broadcast storms.

 

[anthonyanderberg]

You are correct that the line cards need the CPU to be running enorder to function. I'm not as familiar with the 8100s but if its like the 8600s you should be able to find older PC RAM that is compatible (although unsupported.) What do the start/load messages contain? It might be helpful to know how far it gets, esp if Daddy^3 is on the right track.

 

[klawit]

I think there are no loops as we didn't change the network since years but who knows, maybe the local sysadmin made some modifications unknown to us.

At the moment the switch no longer starts up completely. There are some loading firmware messages for the line cards, 2x 8116 and one 8108, thats all. Sometimes not even a login prompt comes up, it seems to crash while booting up. I think I will remove all uplinks first to overcome any network wiring errors and try restarting again. Maybe replacing the DIMM helps any further. I check the notches to find out the type of RAM.

Thank you very much for your replies.