atcomsystems.ca/forum Forums TDM Business Telephone Systems Nortel Telephones & Systems NAM w/ downclocked CPU

Hey again,

Sooo, we've got a NAM paired with our MICS4.1 KSU. It's the last generation that got released before the NAM was end-of-lifed: a V3G unit with a manufacture date of March 2001. We run NVM 4.0 on it (came with 4.0.4e) plus Cintech Cinphony.

We occasionally have issues with the NAM software where it will start acting funny, almost as if it is being overloaded (will be very slow to respond to voicemail login requests, auto attendant will stop routing calls to the right voicemail boxes, etc.). When that happens, we have to reboot the box. I've noticed that the CPU is always being pegged at 100% activity even when it is working fine.

It's not terribly often, but it's not predictable either. It might happen every other week or it might happen every other month. But it's often enough that it's annoying when it does happen.

It came with 32MB of RAM, and I just bumped that up to 160MB with a stick of 128MB PC100 SDRAM I had laying around. So we will see if maybe that helps.

However, I noticed something else while I was poking at it: when the system boots up, the BIOS claims that it has an "AMD K6-2 166MHz/66" processor (guessing 2nd number is the configured bus speed). But everything I've read about the V3G NAM states that it should have a K6 clocked at 400MHz, and a 100MHz bus.

If this is true, then not only is the FSB downclocked on our NAM, but the CPU clock multiplier is wrong as well (2.5 instead of 4).

There is no way I can find to adjust either the clock multiplier or the FSB clock rate in the BIOS. So I'm guessing that there is a jumper block on the SBC board that controls this stuff. However, I don't see any information in the Nortel documentation that discusses this.

I also haven't been able to find any documentation on the SBC itself. It identifies itself as an "IBM 586VE".

Anybody have any information on this or experience with this? I'm thinking that if the CPU were running at the rate it was supposed to be running at, perhaps some of the performance-induced problems would disappear.

Thanks,

-- Nathan

Your NAM is running in an IBM OS/2 environment and it's possible something may be glitching there. Would not doubt your beginning to see a hard drive failure, too! A new drive with a fresh load may work wonders.

Yep, I know it's running OS/2. I actually ran that as my primary workstation OS for a number of years, many years ago...when I plugged a monitor into the NAM for the first time and saw Warp 4.0 staring me in the face, I thought, "oh, cool! I know this!"

Although I doubt it is failing, I'm worried about the hard drive, too, since it's getting up there in age. My company will have had this system for 10 years as of this summer (it predates my existence here), and I know that with hard drives, it's always a matter of "when," not "if."

And that's actually what got the ball rolling for me on this CPU thing...I realized its days were numbered and decided to shut the system down, pull the hard drive, and image it, which I have successfully done. And this is how I know the hard drive is still good: not a single read error occurred during the cloning process. But get this: hard drive just had its 10th birthday 3 days ago ("born" 15-Feb-2001)! (I'm planning on trying to clone that image to a large Compact Flash card and see if I can boot the NAM off the card using a CF-IDE adapter. If I'm successful, I'll just leave the hard drive disconnected.)

I've never paid terribly close attention to the BIOS on the NAM during bootup, but while I was in there to get the hard drive out and then replace it again, I also performed the RAM upgrade. I made sure that it counted the right amount of RAM when I booted it up (it did), and that's when I noticed the CPU clock discrepancy.

Now, given that the previous revision of the NAM hardware was a Pentium @ 100MHz, MAYBE Nortel decided to use an AMD K6 as they were surely both plentiful and cheap back then, but left it downclocked to 166MHz on purpose to reduce the need for extra thermal management? (There's no CPU fan in there, just a heatsink.)

Marketing materials all say 400MHz/100MHz, though, not 166MHz/66MHz. So I've got to believe something is set incorrectly.

-- Nathan

Besides the OS/2 there's Access software that helps in controlling the system. If you do a power cycle/reboot and your problems clear, you can do a "scheduled reboot" through the Access software.

let us know how the cf card works!

I still haven't figured out the CPU clock (took the SBC out of the NAM chassis, looked it over, and couldn't find any jumpers...found a BIOS update for it that I've thought about doing, but the thought scares me a bit: it would suck if I bricked this board).

HOWEVER, I *have* successfully moved everything over to a CF card, and it's working brilliantly!

I'll document the process over in another thread, for those who are interested.