NSA320 wont boot with battery in place

[bitz]

OK, I have a strange problem. Bought a NSA320 that wasn't working out of the box. Through some fiddling I was able to restore the stock firmware by pulling the RTC battery (it was dead anyway) and using the Zaxyl restore USB scripts. Of course I wanted to install Arch, so loaded up my stick with the installer and rootfs, added a hard drive and applied power. When the LEDS settled I puled the power and lugged it back in, all the lights flashed briefly and then nothing.

Through trial and error, I found that if I pulled the RTC battery, waited a few seconds and applied power it would successfully boot. If ground is hooked up on rs232 cable, it also won't boot, and by won't boot, I mean it is acting dead, no lights and no activity, nothing. Is there something I am missing? I plan to use this in a small office as a network share, so it has to be able to both boot, and keep time if possible, any suggestions?

I have another that I have been using for over a year though, that one has the issue where the rs232 needs to be hooked up for it to cold boot (so I just have it on a UPS rather than trying to figure that one out) So I know about that issue, but it's something completely different on this new one.

[WarheadsSE]

That's odd on both accounts. Very. As for the 320 that "doesn't boot" with the UART Gnd connected, do you mean the network doesn't come up?

As for the battery.. wow.

[bitz]

I'm still here! Just got busy and haven't checked on my post.

I mean that the box won't boot anything, so to watch it boot, I have to start out with just tx and Rx attached, then once it gets going, I plug in the ground (this way I can see the session, but can't send any commands before I add ground). Same thing if the battery is in place, there is a quick flicker from the light, but then nothing, no serial output, hard drives don't spin up, and the script doesn't get executed on a thumb drive if present..... By your reaction I'm guessing I have partially faulty hardware, I mean there isn't anything that could stop the boot process that happens before any output right?

Messing around with this new one I just had to look at my older one. It does not display the same behavior, without UART hooked up it appears to boot, HD spins up and top light is solid blue when a everything settles, but it never shows up on the network. So I just resolved to leave the UART to USB plugged in to my goflex net sitting next to it, it always boots when I hook that up to see what is going on.

[WarheadsSE]

It is booting, it's the network that isn't coming up.

Unplug the UART, boot it, then plug in the UART and check the state of the network

[bitz]

I'll try this when I get home. Just to be clear, this is my older one I was talking about in the second paragraph, not as concerned about this box, but I wouldn't mind seeing what is going on.

The first box (the new one) I was talking about is absolutely dead if the battery is in place. When applying power the light flickers then does not come back on. UART shows nothing.

[WarheadsSE]

Oh yeah, no. That one's really screwy. I'd almost be it is pulling some 3/5v from the Serial, or even dropping a drain down the Ground. You might want to check that, actually.

[bitz]

OK, checking the network, eth0 isn't coming up, and I'm not sure how to get it up.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_code('', '# dmesg | grep eth0
[ 5.719940] mv643xx_eth_port mv643xx_eth_port.0: eth0: port 0 with MAC address MY:MA:CA:DD:RE:SS
')

$this->bbcode_second_pass_code('', '# ip a l
1: lo: <LOOPBACK,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 16436 qdisc noqueue state UNKNOWN group default
link/loopback 00:00:00:00:00:00 brd 00:00:00:00:00:00
inet 127.0.0.1/8 scope host lo
2: eth0: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP> mtu 1500 qdisc mq state DOWN group default qlen 1000
link/ether xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff')

trying to bring eth0 up yields
$this->bbcode_second_pass_code('', '# ip link set eth0 up
# ip a l
1: lo: <LOOPBACK,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 16436 qdisc noqueue state UNKNOWN group default
link/loopback 00:00:00:00:00:00 brd 00:00:00:00:00:00
inet 127.0.0.1/8 scope host lo
2: eth0: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP> mtu 1500 qdisc mq state UNKNOWN group default qlen 1000
link/ether xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
')

I edited out my MAC addr

[pepedog]

Try this.
Poweroff, when stopped unplug for 5 seconds.
If eth0 comes up it will do so on reboot.

[bitz]

Powering off and on in this fashion does seem to work, but only with the cable connected the few times I tried. Why is this? Is there a setting that is being cleared, or the watchdog you talk about in another thread being reset? Pretty annoying to have to go down to the closet to do a reboot, though it's not something I have to do often.

For the first one, you mentioned dropping a drain to ground or pulling from the serial cable, any clues how I would go about that? I'm not that handy with a multimeter, but I'm sure I can figure it out if I know what I am looking for.

[WarheadsSE]

Let us suffice it to say that there is something seriously whacked in that hardware.