6600M Front panel dead.

Steve KD2OM

This morning when I turned my 3 week old 6600M on, the front panel did not light up. No display, no leds, no control. The rear panel hdmi is also not working. The only sign the radio was working was audio from the speaker. I started SSDR and am able to tune the radio. I can also key the mic attached to the radio and I get power out. I turned it off and back on but it is the same thing. I figure at this point that I will just leave it on until I hear from Flex incase they want to troubleshoot it remotely.
A few days ago when I turned the radio on I got the double blinking red led indication. After trying several things I finally got it to run by removing the power completely. The radio operated normally up until this morning.
I submitted a support ticket but since it is the weekend I figured I would mention it here as well. Needless to say this is disappointing, it looks like I will need to use one of my 25 year old radios if I want to operate today.

Steve KD2OM

Bill -VA3WTB

I think this is the first time I have heard of this sort of problem. If you can use the outboard screen to use the radio? that would keep you going till Flex contacts you.

Rick WN2C

You might try and remove power from the radio (unplug it from the back) and wait 30 seconds and plug it back in and reboot.

Steve KD2OM

That may fix it but I really would rather wait until I talk to the service department in case they want to try something with it. I believe they can get into the radio remotely if they wish. 

WX7Y

Can you get into the radio by using the Windows software by chance? 
I have heard of this several times and I have seen this on my radio a couple of times but removing the power to the radio seems to correct it. 
I think that this is caused by the SDcard not booting up properly that is in the radio BUT I could be wrong.
Flex new about the issue and sent out a replacement to a friend of mine who installed it him self. 

This may not be YOUR issue but sounds like the same thing.
Here is some of the post's about this issue
https://community.flexradio.com/flexradio/topics/flex-6400m-backup-sd

73's
Bret
WX7Y

Warren-K6WKW

Flex has great documentation, very thorough, but many of us don't sort through all of it since there is so much. It's really very much like the military require so one sometimes must work to find what is wanted.

In the Hardware Reference manual on page 18 you can find:

Error Conditions Certain hardware and software error conditions cause the radio to stop operating and display an error code by flashing the Power button light as follows: • One red flash: Fan malfunction • Two red flashes: Software crash • Three red flashes: Boot failure • Four red flashes: Input power over voltage • Five red flashes: CPU overcurrent • Six red flashes: Input power under voltage In the case of a software crash, the error code repeats for about 15 seconds, then the radio will reboot. In the other cases, the error code repeats until the Power button is pressed, then the radio shuts down. An additional press of the Power button is needed to restart the radio.

Remember there are two major parts to the M radios - the RF back end and the User Interface front end which contains a PC tablet and other Flex S/W in addition. It sounds like you have a crashed set of S/W in the Interface section. I'd remove power completely for a minute or two, then re-power and restart. If that doesn't get you going then use the procedure that is earlier in the H/W Manual:

Reset Procedure With the radio powered off, press and hold down the power button for approximately 5 seconds until the Power LED flashes white, then release the power button. The radio will start and will set all of its internal settings to their default values.

I believe there was a time this happened to me but it wasn't recurring. Your choice whether to try the power reset and maybe the S/W reset or wait till Monday for Flex.

73, - Warren - K6WKW

Neal_K3NC

I have seen  this before, its a confusion between the front-end ('Maestro') and the back-end (radio). I would turn off the radio, then remove the power cord from the back of the radio. Count to 10, then plug it back in. Then hit the power plug and I bet the front end will come up normally.

73

Steve KD2OM

Tim at Flex had me do the hard reset procedure which got everything working but of course loses all the saved memories and profiles.
It is still unacceptable that this ever happens.

73
Steve KD2OM

Ted VE3TRQ

It may be unacceptable, but with software, and today’s state of software development, you will just need to accept it once in a while. As long as the developers put effort into fixing bugs as they are found, you cannot expect more. It is entirely possible to save all your profiles and settings by doing a backup - then you can restore all those profiles after a reset. You WILL be doing more resets, I suspect, although so far in two years of using a 6600M, I have not needed to do so - just a power off full restart.

Bill -VA3WTB

Steve, your radio is far more sophisticated then other radios. There is a lot going on inside that box. this may not be a bug, but rather something that can happen. In your radio there are several processors that rely on perfect timing with many components. It is possible that they can get confused or not hand shacking correctly. When something strange happens to your radio a complete factory reset will clear any faults in the processes. Some time simply shutting down and pulling the power cable will reset the basic systems.
In the future remember to save your profiles so yo can bring them back up after a hard reset.

Steve KD2OM

I worked for a radio company for many years and am no stranger to software radios, we just didn't ship radios that needed software resets all the time. As I said in my first post, this is the second time it has been necessary in a very short time. I just hope it is not indicative of a larger problem. 
I will make backups of the profiles and memories for any future issues.

73
Steve KD2OM

Steve K9ZW

@Steve KD2OM

Steve - if you can figure out what is upsetting your setup, that would be very helpful.  

The out-sync power on/off hasn't been reported, and I'm hopeful you can figure out the root cause through observation.

I don't want to jinx anything by saying I haven't experienced the out of sync state, but should I say rather that I didn't know what the fix was (wiping brow, whew...).

Wishing you the best experience with your new Flex-6600M!

73

Steve
K9ZW

Blog:  http://k9zw.wordpress.com  

Harold Rosee

Steve,

I have a friend with a 6400M that had a power failure over the weekend while his radio was on.  We could not get the radio back up resetting it or any other way.  We finally figured out the switch his radio was plugged into died during the power failure.  Once we moved the radio straight into his router it fixed itself and was back up.  I assume it had to download something from Flex.  That is really cool except if the internet was still down he would have had a dead radio for a while.  This is another reason that Flex needs to supply instructions on how to back up the SD card(s) in the radios.

Harold
W5ZZT

WX7Y

Harold, this sounds more like a IP issue between the head and base radio, the 64-6600 uses 2 DHCP IP address's and maybe with the Ethernet switch dieing one or the other IP's got stuck on a different subnet and couldn't find one another and not really having to do with downloading something from FLEX but rather pull a new IP address from the local router.

SDCard backup is a easy process if you really want to do it, simply do a google search for cloning or copy a SDCard, there are some good programs that do a great job copping bit by bit and most are free, just make SURE you have the exact same size, same brand and same series SDCard as the original. 
I have done this MANY times for Raspberry Pie, GPS maps etc. 

73
Bret

bobby

Easy to backup I now keep the original sd card for my 6400M in a safe place. Replaced it with a sandisk SDHC 32gb ultra after imaging it from the original flex sd card in the 6400m. Boots and works great so now have 3 backups plus the 1 in the 6400M in use. The longest part was removing and putting back in the cabinet screws.
I used win32disk image to image and burn the sd cards.

Just as a side note - I tried to do this the right way, I sent Dan the service manager an email at the beginning of December requesting to purchase a replacement sd card for my 6400m since I wanted to be pro-active, however he never responded so after waiting over 3 weeks I took care of it myself, I was wondering if the 32gb sd card would even work since the original card in the flex was only 256mb but it worked great so I made numerous backups to hold onto for future needs.

Jon_KF2E

Just curious, are you planning to update the cards every time there is a software update? I assume the image changes every time there is an update.

I'm not sure I would want to open the radio three or four times a year just to make SD backups.

Jon...kf2e

Jon_KF2E

Just curious, are you planning to update the cards every time there is a software update? I assume the image changes every time there is an update.

I'm not sure I would want to open the radio three or four times a year just to make SD backups.

Jon...kf2e

WX7Y

Joe,
The updates are done online just like you do now, The SDCard hold the operating program so you don't worry about updating the cards all the time. 
Bret
WX7Y