Possible bad hard drive BCM 400 3.5

[norstarboy125]

Good Morning,

Ok I know it's been probably 5 yrs or so since I've logged into a NT box so my memory on it is a little rusty. I have a new customer that says their BCM 400 has been failing the past couple weeks but a reboot gets it up and running again. I'm heading out to the location to diagnose the problem further today so here's where my questions start. What or where is the best place to look for hard drive errors on this dinosaur? I also know it's a chance it can be the BFT going bad and checking out the caps you can tell how bad it is. Can the BFT be looked at while the system is powered up? Can a 3.7 hard drive work on a 3.5 BCM 400? I know it would be best to upgrade this box and I'm definitely going to recommend doing that but I think right now they want a fast fix...please advise.

Charm City Communications

http://www.charmcitycommunications.com

 

[Firebird Scrambler]

There are a number of choices

One way I know is to go into the Mntce section via the browser and set up a weekly system reboot to take out of hours (if this is possible?). I had a customer a couple of years ago who found that their BCM 400 kept losing it's IP connection. I kept the beast going for many months via this method until they upgraded to 4.0.

You can use a 3.7 disk and I'm certain that the keycodes for your 3.5 will transfer OK onto it. The downside is that you will have to reprogram it all from scratch. I did tinker many moons ago with upgrading using an older database, but ran into problems.

I don't suppose that you have any upgrade kit keycodes to 3.6/3.7 and then onto 4.0?. It might be possible to source a 4.0 MSC card that has the required keycodes if you had to rebuild it again.

All the best

Firebird Scrambler
Meridian 1 / Succession and BCM / Norstar Programmer in the UK

http://www.linkedin.com/in/davidbromley

If it's working, then leave it alone!.

 

[norstarboy125]

Firebird- I tried having the customer try to login the maint section and he said the pswd/ username compo didn't work but he could get into the config. When you say to take out of hours do you mean to schedule reboots after business hours? Unfortunately I don't have that keycode sitting around but I can most likely get my hands on it.

Charm City Communications

http://www.charmcitycommunications.com

 

[Firebird Scrambler]

That's Odd? He might be having a Java problem. I seem to remember that you needed Java 1.5 or 5.1. Not sure which way round it was?. Yes, I was referring to getting the BCM to reboot out of business hours. From what I remember, You browse to the BCM and you have around 4 icons in the middle of the screen. I thought that you selected the bottom one and once in the Mntce section there is somewhere where you can schedule a reboot to take place.

It might be worth asking the customer to use a different browser. I seem to recall that Firefox or Chrome worked OK, whereas later versions of Internet Explorer can cause problems.

If the customer can log into the normal programming section, then there is an area where the site ID can be viewed and I think another one to list out the keycodes, which you will need.

Contact me if I can be of any more assistance.

All the best

Firebird Scrambler
Meridian 1 / Succession and BCM / Norstar Programmer in the UK

http://www.linkedin.com/in/davidbromley

If it's working, then leave it alone!.

 

[exsmogger]

On the older BCM's I found Java 1.5 worked the best. A R3.7 hard drive will work and the keycodes will migrate, but as Firebird wrote you will have to reprogram from scratch.

Brian Cox
Georgia Telephone

http://Georgia-Telephone.com

http://www.linkedin.com/in/briancox1952

 

[norstarboy125]

Ok so went to job site and found out the system was redundant and running on the mirrored drive, the primary was in a failure state. I ended up ordering a blank Nortel drive so when it comes in I will swap it out with the bad primary drive and pray everything goes as planned. These older NT boxes don't leave me with fuzzy feelings inside..

Charm City Communications

http://www.charmcitycommunications.com

 

[exsmogger]

The one time I dealt with a redundant drive I put in a blank to replace a bad drive and it was mirrored by the good drive on bootup with no problems. Good luck.

Brian Cox
Georgia Telephone

http://Georgia-Telephone.com

http://www.linkedin.com/in/briancox1952