Flex 6600M not booting

Grant Kesselring

I normally do not power down my Flex 6600M for long periods of time.  Recently, I was out of town for several days and powered down the radio.  When I returned, my radio would not boot properly.

After pressing the power button, a gray screen comes up with the words, "Please wait..." in the center.  I waited over night and the same message is still displaying.  I am able to select different versions.  I select v3.1.12 and it says the installation is in progress with a progress bar.  However, when the installation completes it says "Update complete.  Select a radio to run" and I'm back at the gray screen with the words, "Please wait".  Any ideas on what to do next?

Mike-VA3MW

I have converted this to a helpdesk ticket.

Robert Lonn

You shut down your radio, did you also shut down the DC power???

Bob Needleman

When you went away did you disconnect the power supply from AC mains?  Sounds like you may have had a power surge or EMP. Whenever I go on vacation I completely disconnect - AC mains, coax, etc. After my last vaction (6 weeks), when I came home and re-connected everything, it all powered up just fine.

Robert Lonn

The KEY is that after you Power down the 6600M radio and it appears to be powered off, it is NOT!!! You MUST wait at least 30 seconds BEFORE you **** the DC power... This is Per Flex!!! After I learned this all my power down events no longer cause strange behavior on Power On!!

Grant Kesselring

Thanks for all the recommendations.  Here is what I've done:

From a power-off state, I disconnected DC power and waited 2 mins. Then, I re-applied DC power and waited an additional 5mins. Then, I hit the power button which blinked and then turned solid green. However, I am not getting past a gray screen that says, "Please wait...".

At this point I have a help ticket opened.  I'll report back here with what I find.

Robert Lonn

Try repeating this a few times.. I had similar issues due to not shutting things down correctly and had to do this a few times to get everything working. Sort of like having to re-boot your windows computer a few times to get it to start correctly.. That is all I can think of.

Grant Kesselring

I've tried powering on a few more times and I'm now getting three red flashes (boot failure?) on the power button.  The screen is stuck on "Please wait".  I will await further instructions from my helpdesk ticket.  Thanks for all the suggestions.

Grant Kesselring

Here is a follow-up to the issues that I was having with my Flex 6600M not booting:

After performing some diagnostic testing at the direction of Ken at the Helpdesk, it was determined that I had an SD Card corruption failure.  Luckily, swapping out the card was a simple procedure that was well documented.  I was comfortable performing the procedure myself, so Ken/Tim sent me the new SD card which I received within a few days. 

The procedure involved removing the screws from the top cover of the radio, finding where the SD card socket was on the main board, and unlatching the card socket.  Then, the new card went in, was latched into place, and the cover re-installed.  The whole procedure took about 30 mins.

Now, I am running V3.1.12 (which is the version that the new card was configured with).  Everything seems to be working well again.  No problems with booting anymore!

Thank you Ken and Tim for working with me to remote diagnose the issue, and for providing a way to fix this in the field so I didn't have to send in the radio for repair!

73,
Grant K1KD

Bob Needleman

Grant - had a feeling it was a corrupted SD card from your description (I have the 6600M also). Glad you were able to get it working again with the new SD card. Hopefully with v3.1.12, you won't have any more problems. I love my 6600M and, hopefully, 3.1.12 will be stable for the long term. 
73,
Bob K3AC

Grant Kesselring

Hi Bob - I was on V3.1.8 when the boot problem occurred.  Evidently, the SD card corruption issue has been addressed in the v.3.1.12 maintenance release.  I love my 6600M as well and am happy to have it running again!

Bob Needleman

Hi Grant- yes, I did read that V3.1.8 was the 'guilty' party in causing SD card corruption.  My 6600M came with V.2.6.1 from the previous owner, so I upgraded directly to 3.1.12 and avoided the earlier 3.1.8 version completely. My 6600M is working great and hopefully will not give me any problems. Yes, it's  a wonderful SDR and I love the "M" interface. Not perfect of course, as no rig is, but it meets all of my needs (and has a lot of features I don't 'need', but they're in there, hi).  73, Bob