6600 (non M) wont boot

Rich McCabe

Went to fire up the 6600 this morning and  ended up with a triple red flash showing it wont boot. Tried holding in the power button until I got the white but that did not help.

Filled out a help ticket but I think I have heard they are running behind?  Anything else to try while waiting on them?

I am assuming its going back for repair.

YV5WZ

did you try a hard reset?
Oh! I see you did

AH0U

Don’t just turn it off but also unplug the power cord and wait a few seconds before you plug it in svain

Hunter - K3IE

Had the same issue with my 6600 - the 3 flashes of death. Had to send mine back - Tim and team did a timely turnaround for me. - Hunter K3IE

John WA7UAR

What was the reason for your issue Hunter? 

Rich McCabe

Yea I have had the power unplugged for 5 minutes and the astron that powers it off over night.

Hunter - K3IE

Technical reason was never given. My original 6600 arrived on a Friday and I had it up and running the next day (Sat). Powered it down Saturday night and would not boot the next morning. Multiple reboot attempts and resets later I gave up. Opened a ticket Monday morning and Tim responded quickly with a reset procedure - that failed and he said “send it back” and apologized profusely for the inconvenience. Apparently the demand is high for these rigs and they are using a third party for assembly. Tim mentioned they had identified a “weak link” somewhere in the chain that affected a block of units. This particular symptom has been posted multiple times on this forum. Not sure if the specific causes are related but the way Flex responded to my situation made me feel like they “had been there before”. The most important thing to me was the professional way Tim and Flex handled the fix. They were in daily communication with me providing updates when I could expect the replacement radio. The y told me to hold on to the oririginal rig until I received the new one and then ship it back prepaid. They followed up to make sure the new one was stable - which it is. I am really enjoying the 6600 - no regrets. FWIW - Hunter

Rich McCabe

Hunter their third party manufacturing is in walking distance in the same industrial area. This is nothing new unless something has changed in the last few months. As far as I know the demand has nothing to do with where they do manufacturing.

I hope this is not a sign of things to come as I am on my 3rd 6600 since they were released. The first two were M models with issues which led me to downgrade to the non M.

Rich

Jim K4JAF

I too had this same problem with a new 6600. Worked one day, powered down and would not boot up next morning.. Quick replacement by Flex and no problems at all with second 6600.  

Sterling, AK1K

I also have this problem.  After two days of working beautifully, the next day my new 6600  wouldn't boot.  I filed a support ticket and they decided that it had to go back.  They sent a UPS Shipping label to return the radio at no cost to me.  It got there in three days and is now in the "expedited" queue awaiting a service technician.  The process has been fairly straightforward.

While I'm disappointed that the problem showed up. they seem to be handling it well and I expect the radio will be returned soon in working condition.  My experience and that of others reported here makes me wonder if they are doing a reasonable 'burn-in' period on new units.

Russ Ravella

This is a little scary.  I took delivery on a 6600 a week ago and it failed in this same way in the first two hours!  Turned it off, started it back up, three flashing red light.  Nothing I tried helped and Flex Support just had me ship it back.  Matt, Eric and Dawn were fantastic in getting me a replacement as fast as possible but I sure hope this isn't an endemic problem (meaning, it's just a matter of time before the replacement fails too).  There are several other posts on this forum from people with this problem.  Jeeezzzzzz......  But the good (great) news is Flex is turning out to be a high quality "no BS, no run around, just make it right - period" company in actual practice so one way or anther, things should be OK in the end.

Bill -VA3WTB

If the support was not as good yes it WOULD be scary.

Ted VE3TRQ

Need to provide the opposite side also. Have had my 6600M since April, on most of the time 7x24, but also turned off a dozen times in that period, and zero problems of any kind. I feel for those who have had problem units, but there certainly must be a large number of satisfied owners with no problems.

Bill -VA3WTB

Correct Ted, out of a few thousand in the field we see pretty low problem post.

Rich McCabe

No doubt there are a lot of zero issue units out there.

I will get it back soon enough I am sure.

Russ Ravella

Yeah Ted, I suspect that's true.  If there are even a few hundred units out there in which several types of hardware issues can all result in boot failure, and you search for boot failure and get say 10 hits, that may seem like a lot of boot failures but it's actually only a few percent of several types of hardware failures being reported here over whatever period the search covers (I saw about 2 years worth in mine).  That's pretty darn good for a high tech piece like a Flex radio.  I'm counting on that being the situation.  Its just that it seems like several boot failures hit recently making me wonder if there might be a new part issue.    I'm a retired physicist who worked in spacecraft payload design and manufacturing for 36 years.  Sudden defective parts and sub assemblies in the supply chain are a fact of life and totally unavoidable.  What matters is that Flex is being honest, transparent and direct, and super responsive.  And that has sure been my experience of them so far.

Rich McCabe

Talked to Tim this morning and they determined it to be a hardware issue most likely and to send it back. He sent me a RMA and shipping ticket.

While out on the bench I was going to give it a once over to make sure any internal cables were not loose so I pulled the cover and checked that.

As it turns out it would boot fine without an Ethernet cable attached. After a lot of troubleshooting and swapping out network switches I have found that it just wont boot when there is internet available.  If I divorce the switches from the router it will boot fine with a 169.x.x.x address. Renew the IP on a PC so I get on the same 168 subnet and SSDR will connect.

I have no clue what is going on.

Rich

N8SDR

Rich, is it possible another device on your network is assigned the same IP address when your plugged into the switch or router? could you try adding a different but static IP for it and see if that works/ - Also make sure that the small contact blades on the ethernet connector are not bent and shorting against another.

Bill -VA3WTB

Rich make sure you contact Flex and let them know what you found. Before sending it back,,you may have found something they can help with?

Rich McCabe

Bill, I let Tim know but have not heard back.

Richard,  yea I was thinking the same but did not figure an IP conflict would stop the Flex from booting. I tried downgrading the software/firmware while on the 169 subnet and that did not help.  I finally give the flex a static IP address well outside of the DHCP scope and it fired it and seems to be working fine.

Seems to me if this is normal operation for an IP conflict then Flex needs to review that and come up with a flashing error for no IP address when its set to DHCP.

N8SDR

Rich

I set my network equipment inside the router or DHCP manager to assign the same IP address to each Mac address this way I never have that issue. It could have been as simple as someone in your household or close by Cells phone saw your network the Flex wasn't on and or the the lease was up on the IP address with DHCP and the other device garbed it. 

Rich McCabe

Yea hard to say.  I am more curious what Flex has to say about the issue. You would think if it was  an IP conflict it would have done something besides the 3 red flash no boot error.

Regardless, for anyone with a no boot condition I would suggest they unplug all cables except the power cable and try it.

Jeffrey Kerber, N3VE

Rich, very interesting, and cool that you found a workaround.
Jeff

Rich McCabe

Still not sure the radio is functioning as it should. It will not work with DHCP. Just static. I have flipped it back and forth a couple times with no luck on DHCP.

I even changed the DHCP scope on the router just to move it up to a new set of IPs and still does 3 red blinks for no boot.

Joe N3HEE

Check the log on the router.  Is the radio making DHCP requests to your router ?  Are other devices on that router getting IP addresses via DHCP ?  

Rich McCabe

I dont think my router logs DHCP requests. The only thing in the event log is on the WAN side. But the DHCP server is working fine (or appears to be) and all other devices are getting an IP without issues.  As I said I moved the scope up and everything picked up IPs in the new scope range.

N8SDR

What brand and model is the router

Rich McCabe

Its a Motorola. I am not positive but I think its a 7315. Will check when I get home. I think I have a couple of them in stock for customers and might swap it out.

Just bizarre everything else gets an IP address from it but the Flex wont boot if I try.  Actually with multiple Flex restarts I have got it to start a couple times on the proper subnet and a couple times showing the 169 address.

Ted VE3TRQ

This thread is getting a lot of attention, with reason :-) What an interesting problem! Strange things can happen if there are cable or connector problems in Ethernet. Have you tried swapping out the Ethernet cable(s) between the Flex and the router, Rich? Of course if the connector in the Flex is at fault, it's a return to the factory. Ethernet interfaces negotiate speed and TX/Rx pairs in the cable, so connectors and cables with problems can manifest in odd ways.

Rich McCabe

Yes sir, swapped cables right off the bat. Switches have been swapped. Only thing I have not tried is another modem/router which I plan to do.  Just bizarre that trying to run DHCP on the Flex would make it not boot and give me the triple red fault light.

Tim told me that if it fails to get an IP that it should default to a 169 address and boot anyway.

So still thinking there is a hardware issue.

It works perfect if I set it to static IP.

Jay Nation

Rich

Without knowing all the details of your network setup, there is now way to determine just what the problem is.

But when using DHCP, only a single DHCP server should be issuing addresses. My guess is there might be a second, or multiple DHCP server in operation, Maybe one from the ISP, That's providing the incorrect IP address. With DHCP enabled it's coming from somewhere. and if the IP's it gets are outside the range your router is configured to provide, then you may have more than one DHCP server operational on your network. Perhaps it's some other device, a cellphone or something configured to share an IP by providing IP's thru DHCP, or possibly some other device possibly a PC. Sorry for guessing, might not be any of that. 

When dealing with an unknown DHCP server is may be best to use Static/Reserved IPs to avoid the error. It sounds like it's asking for an IP, and then accepting the first IP offered. DHCP can only work when there's a single DHCP server, handing out the IP's. Any handed out should be in the configured range of IP's.

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