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ME-260 died!
vining
Posts: 4,368
in AMX Hardware
On a recent service job one of our techs disconnected wires connected to an NXI which housed the ME-260. The purpose was simply to neaten up the wires. After re-connecting and powering the master back up only somethings worked, it could be pinged, leds indicated RS232 coms but nothing on the ICSNET HUB which had a considerable amount of hardware attached. When pulling the ME-260 he noticed the "Service" led was on indidcating an internal communications error with the ColdFire processor. Re-installing firmware had no effect. We actually didn't do any previous work on the system but as we were the ones working at the time we took the responsibilty but none of this makes sense. Once the ME-260 was replaced everything connected worked perfectly indicating all of the re-wiring, re-connecting was done correctly but lets says it wasn't. Even if all the IR's, relays, ICSNET HUB, Ethernet and serial connection were wired wrong that shouldn't have any affect on the processor, at least not to my knowledge. The only thing that is remotely suspect is this is an old ME-260 (5-8yrs), the residence was with out electrical power for (I think) 4 days prior because of outages and then the master was disconnected for 6 hours for the re-wiring. Could it be just a battery thing? Although new battreries were tried after the fact, was that too late? Were we just in the wrong place at the wrong time?
Any one with ideas or familiar with the ME-260 your input would be helpful. As with all troublshooting it's beneficial to know the possible cause of a failure but with this one I'm grasping.
Any ideas, any at all!
Any one with ideas or familiar with the ME-260 your input would be helpful. As with all troublshooting it's beneficial to know the possible cause of a failure but with this one I'm grasping.
Any ideas, any at all!
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All went well until the sparkies took the internal power off the batteries and plugged it directly into shore power in the middle of an industrial area.
Bingo, the ME260 let its smoke out...
The master will not stop functioning if the Lithium battery is faulty. Persistent variables will not be "persistent" and all variables essentially become "volatile", whether they were declared as volatile or not. Also the date/time will definitely always be wrong until it's time is set. Once it is set, the date/time will be correct until the unit is unpowered again.
The Service LED being constantly "on" definitely indicates a hardware failure, specifically a failure related to the ICSNet/ICSHub interfaces, not an internal processor error.
Ok then, back to the scenario; every wire was hooked up wrong, relays to IR ports, polarities backwards and RS232 port completely wired wrong, ISCHub connected to 232 and vice verse. There's no voltage to speak of anywhere other than data transmit and data receive, so would the processor crap out. I say no. I don't think there is any physical mis-wiring possibiltiy combination that would cause this failure. Even if there were voltages on these ports or wires, I'm sure engineering has opto isolators on all inputs to protect from these sorts of occurences if not just to protect from random transient voltages that may be passed on conductors from simple carelessness, inductive reactance or static discharge.
Now try to explain what happened in the real case where everything was wired correctly and the replacement just booted up and ran. ESD?
from technote: http://www.amx.com/techsupport/techNote.asp?id=444 I didn't make up that part about the ColdFire processor, how else would I know it had one.
alexanbo wrote: Neither one has power though just Xmit and Rcv.
So I loose comms not crap the master.
I could give a rats a$$ about the money this is going to cost me, I just what to understand what the heck happened!
Maybe and it would be the most likely. The service LED is connected to the device that handles the ICSNet/ICSHub traffic. If it is on, the problem is that device, not the processor. Notice the TN said "loss of communications with the Coldfire processor". That is true, it's just the problem is with the ICSNet/ICSHub device which communicates with the processor.
Incorrect. ICSNet has power on a pair to power ICSNet devices. There is current limiting devices, etc on the lines but there is power.
As I said before, hardware failure was the reason it didn't work. The cause, maybe ESD, maybe just coincidental failure. Hard to diagnose over ether.
cwpartridge wrote: The external HUB devices worked fine with the replacement ME-260 so is it likely the HUB communications interface built into the ME-260's card.
I agree, we'll probably never know what caused this, I was just hoping for ideas and possibilities that I haven't already thought of and ruled out. I'm not a big fan of coincidental failure, not that it doesn't happen, it's just that's the type of failure you can't justify and explain to a customer and that bites.
I'm sitting in a client's Living Room as I type, watching re-runs on HBO because their Runco Plasma started losing sync with it's processor the day after we upgraded their Intellicontrol to a NetLinx. Of course, it's not acting up now, and I have to babysit the thing, hoping for a failure while I'm here. Because, of course, the plasma failure has been attributed to the NetLinx install.
My guess is your ME260 just died, all by itself, and any correlation to what you have done is simply coincidence.