sundance-communications.com/forum Forums TDM Business Telephone Systems Mitel Telephones & Systems sx200 EL won't boot - H + chasing dashes

Got a weird problem.

Customer had a processor go out. We swapped with an identical processor out of storage, and migrated the ID chip and flash card. On trying to boot, we get the normal H + chasing dashes, then the letter C, then all dark, then, where we should get two dashes, it instead goes back to the H + chasing dashes.

We've done some diagnostic parts-swapping and we found that:

Suspect ID + Suspect flash + Known Good processor = Good boot
Known good ID + Known good flash + suspect processor = Return to H + chasing

This leads me to believe that the processor is bad, but we pulled three other processors out of storage, tried them with the same ID chip and flash; then with known good IDs and Flash, and all of the processors from storage show H + chasing dashes.

Has anyone seen this? Any words of wisdom, cautions, advice?

What happens when you press the interrupt button (not reset), while the display is showing the "C"?
That's the normal re-initialize procedure?

That does make it boot normally to E.8

My theory is that long storage can cause a processor to lose any program that it may have, and that causes this problem. I don't see any sort of battery on the processor, but there is a large capacitor.

Man, been 5 years since I touched an EL, but if you use a new processor with exhistig flash and id chip, you want it to be dumb. And yes the cap, 1.0 farad at 5 volts(?), will discharge after a year or so. but it recharges a whole lot faster than ni-cads. Like 1 minute versus several hours to several days. My guess is right now you've got a mix of trash and program., on processor, and maybe on flash card. Hopefully the flash card is not corrupted and you only have to load it onto processor correctly. BUT, like I said it's been 5 years and you need someone with more recent knowledge. John C.

Here's the skinny, a Mitel MCC will hold it's "initialized" programming or database programming for about 68 hours. After that time period has elapsed it starts to lose 1s and 0s (brain cells). The more ones and zeroes lost, the worse the card will act. The only thing you can do is what 55shooter said, press INTR button when the letter C pops up which is about 2 minutes and 36 seconds after powering up the system. Have a good one.

MitelTech...