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Forum Discussion
Readynas ultra 6 dead motherboard
My Ultra 6 is not booting any more, After turning on the power the blue light goes on, disks start spinning, and i get readynas on the display. But it does not boor or the network lights on t...
Did you find a way to fix the issue or find a replacement motherboard? I have exactly the same symptoms after this course of events:
Have a readynas Ultra 6, been stable and fine for 6 years almost. Have been running OS6 for a long time, had 6.2.4 without any issues whatsoever since that release came out.
Then I updated to 6.4.2 by clicking update in the webgui. Update went fine, restarted, did a disk scrub and expanded the xraid2 from 5-6 disks. This all went fine without errors.
Turned unit off.
Had the unit configured to power up on itself a few days later.
Unit could not power up, it was stuck with Readynas on the display with a moving slider below. Stuck for at least 24 hours before I held power-button to power off.
Tried to power up again and it is always stuck with only Readynas on the display. Disks spin up and the powerlight is constant blue.
Can not access boot menu.
Can not perform USB-boot, the memory-stick works fine to boot from in other computers.
I tried hooking a serial-cable up to the serial-port, hoping for some console-action, but nothing seems to be printed there.
Waiting for VGA-cable to see if I can debug some more, access BIOS etc.
Also waiting for another ATX power-supply to try that instead of the one in the unit.
I'm hoping it is just a dead power supply, but after some rudimentary measurements it seems to be fine, also under load. Next step is to hook up an oscilloscope to see how stable the voltages are.
Also measured the BIOS-settings-retention-coincell on the board, 3.15V and no significant drop under small load (100uA), so it should be fine.
Questions:
Is there any way to hook up a beep-speaker to the motherboard to get BIOS POST-messages? which connector?
Can the 6.4.2 firmware update cause the BIOS to somehow get corrupted?
What is the correct pinout/voltages for the serial-port on the board? TTL, 3V, 5V or rs232 ? googling I've found references to both of those for different readynas systems.
Anyone have experience debugging these motherboards?
Any help appreciated!
Just FYI, the display will say "ReadyNAS" simply with the application of power. So a bad processor, RAM, just about anlything can be the issue and it will still say that. I've replaced two power supplies in old Pro models -- one I bought in non-working condition and one I'd had for a while. On both, it was the 4-pin 12V connection that had the issue. Coincidence or design flaw, I don't know. There are two separate 12V busses in the power supply, so make sure you check them both. I see you did test under load, so good one on that.
I did some more testing with an oscilloscope. With the readynas motherboard hooked up to the supply, all rails from the powersupply are looking clean and good. Also opened the supply and looked for funky caps and such, but it looked as clean as new inside. Since this is an ultra6 unit, the 4-pin 12V is not used. After about 5 minutes of having power applied and probing around with the scope on the motherboard itself I noticed that both the southbridge and the heatsink on the cpu was getting too warm to touch. I could not see much activity on any of the pins or serial-ports I could find along the edge of the board. All power-rails on the motherboard looked stable and fine. All crystal-oscillators I could find were running, and at power-up there was some traffic going to a winbond-flash-chip, but the main-cpu and southbridge was getting so hot I had to turn off again and I'll now consider this motherboard a paperweight/coaster.
Kind of a sad end of the relatively long life of this ultra6. I'll keep the psu as a spare for my other ultra6. And I don't dare to update the other one to 6.4.2... Frustrating that I still have no clue what killed this one.
Just thought I would jump on and share that I have had the exact same issue. Did you ever find a solution to revive the machine or did it end up being destined for land fill.
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