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I have experienced from the beginning transient boot problems with my X5000. They appear only when the machine has been unused (the powersupply unplugged) several weeks (4-5). The first try to boot after a pause almost always fails. When I press the power button (Fractal Design Core case), booting seems to start normally as the fans begin to rotatate, but after 1-2 secs they suddenly stop and the booting halts. The standby-leds (green and red) on Cyrus board stay lighted, and the 'MCU error led' is blinking.

A second (or at least third) try to boot is usually succesful.

This is not a major issue, but what might possibly cause it...? My power supply is relatively new and of high quality (Seasonic Platinum), and there has not been any issues with it.

Two suggestions immediately come to mind:

- Change the battery

- Make sure all fans (case fans and CPU fan as well as any graphic card fan) are running as they should, and that any filters in front of them are free of dust etc., as well as your CPU cooling ribs and other surroundings

Oh, and number three: Check all internal cables and plugs and make sure they sit properly.

Best regards,

Niels

nbache wrote: ↑Fri Jul 17, 2020 10:01 am Two suggestions immediately come to mind:

- Change the battery

- Make sure all fans (case fans and CPU fan as well as any graphic card fan) are running as they should, and that any filters in front of them are free of dust etc., as well as your CPU cooling ribs and other surroundings

Oh, and number three: Check all internal cables and plugs and make sure they sit properly.

Thanks for the suggestions... I have checked them but cannot test it before I'm again longer period away from my X5000 (I don't have a second machine here). But I doubt any of these is the reason as the problem was present from the very beginning.

I would expect to hear from A-Eon/Varisys some comment on this issue as the led warning should tell to experts what has gone wrong!

I have no idea why it would only appear when your machine have been unplugged for a while and why it would work the second time but the symptoms sounds similar to how the machine would react if it can not read from the microSD-card that contains the uboot and stuff.
(the psu should shut down quite soon after being powered on)

So maybe a bad contact with the card.
I have had my X5000 for around 5 years and a few years ago it would not boot sometimes but it was enough to remove the card and insert it again and since then it has never happened again.

If it only plays up after being "off for a while", then the prime culprit is the battery.

My second choice would be the memory. Take out the memory card, clean the contacts with a soft eraser and clean the socket with a small brush.

My third choice would be PSU.

@smf
I have recently removed and inserted the boot-SD a couple of times, when updating U-Boot. So I doubt that is the culprit, but if nothing else helps I will test with another SD card.

@tony
Thanks for the tips! I have now replaced the battery with a fresh one, and cleaned the DIMMs and the sockets. Let's see if it helps...

But it is unclear to me for what is the battery needed in X5000, except for the realtime clock? If I remember right, I have once booted my machine without having a battery installed.

I haven't had a battery fail in either of my X5000s, so I can't be certain, but with older machines like the XE/SE and X1000, the machine won't even run without a fresh battery IIRC.

It's not only the RTC that uses the battery.

@Roland

What is the latest status of your X5000 problem ? Did you find a solution ?

Now my X5000 developed same MCU Error Led Blinking problem: The standby-leds (green and red) on Cyrus board stay lighted, and the 'MCU error led' is blinking.

seventhwonder wrote: ↑Sun Dec 13, 2020 11:33 am @Roland

What is the latest status of your X5000 problem ? Did you find a solution ?

Now my X5000 developed same MCU Error Led Blinking problem: The standby-leds (green and red) on Cyrus board stay lighted, and the 'MCU error led' is blinking.

As the problem has so far appeared only after my machine has been unplugged for several weeks, I have been able to test it only once after starting this thread. Before that, I had changed the battery, removed the memory dimms and cleaned the contacts. But I also let the machine to stay in the 'standby state' (= powersupply turned on) a few minutes before I turned the machine on, and this time the problem did not appear... There was 'only' the bootup crash during Workbench was loaded, but this happens every now and then, and is probably unrelateted to the MCU issue.

I have also noticed that the power button of the standard X5000 case (FD Core 3300) collects easily dust and contact problems can appear if not clened regularly. In that case the machine does not even try to start as the 'boot' jumper pins do not get connected. But I do not know whether also the MCU problem can be caused in some cases by a bad contact of the power button...?

I did also consult the manufacturer of my powersupply and they said this sounds like a typical 'bios' problem. If the problem were in the ps, it would not be possible to reboot (reset) the machine immediately after the power were cut off by the security systems of the powersupply.

@all

I hooked up a USB-TTL cable to one of X5000 inner serial port, I received some output.
It gives two errors..

According to P5020 manual, vdd_ca is out CPU Core 0 ..



Cyrus Plus
MCU Firmware Version 2.1
Hardware Version 2.1
CPLD Version 2.0
CPLD build time: 10:10:10
CPLD build date: 2014-05-27
MCU build time: 10:34:25
MCU build date: May 30 2014
SYS CLK frequency 133MHz
Dual Ethernet devices fitted.
P5020 processor fitted

>> Power up request detected
Enabled PS_ON
ERROR: vdd_ca out of range. Expected 1.10, got 0.86
WARNING: Supplies Turned off. Shutting down.
ATX supply turned off.
ERROR: vdd_1v0_xorro out of range. Expected 1.00, got -0.00
WARNING: Supplies Turned off. Shutting down.
ATX supply turned off.

- vcc_cpld: 3.33
- vdd_3v3_xorro: 1.32
- vdd_1v0_idt: 0.00
- vdd_1v0_xorro: -0.00
- vdd_3v3: 1.09
- vdd_2v5: 0.08
- vdd_1v2_eth: 0.32
- vdd_pl: -0.00
- vdd_ca: -0.00
- vdd_cb: -0.00
- vdd_ddr3_io: 0.41
- vdd_xvdd_fl: 0.14

....
....

ERROR: CLKGen1 failed to configure!!
Initializing clocks failed please re-power the board.
WARNING: Supplies Turned off. Shutting down.
ATX supply turned off.