[time-nuts] Microsemi versus Spetracom

Brian M brayniac at gmail.com
Wed May 6 18:38:49 EDT 2015


I worked with the Microsemi boxes at my previous employer. If you suspect
it's the CF, there should actually be two in there. You might be able to
revive it by taking the cards out, making backups with dd, and flashing out
to new cards. This might take some trial and error (definitely preserve
your card backups and know which card-slot each image came from).

If I still know what I'm talking about, the reason for two cards was to
allow recovery after failed software updates. This led to some interesting
bugs around configuration if each card had a different version of the
software. The solution I was given at the time was to always upgrade,
reboot, upgrade, reboot. There may have been some factory resets in that
recommendation as well. (though probably just to recover from the bad state
it was in)

The common failure-mode I know of is actually in the power supply. It would
be obvious if this is the case, because the displays didn't light at all in
that failure condition. Assuming that it's not the PS, I'd want to start by
making the backups of the CFs and seeing if you can get it back into
service on some new cards. It's possible that if one is corrupted, flashing
the non-corrupted one to two cards might do the trick. Just a guess.

I'd be happy to provide a bit more detail, but would need to know more
about its death and current state.

- Brian


On Wed, May 6, 2015 at 2:35 PM, Bob Darlington <rdarlington at gmail.com>
wrote:

> My personal S300 died last month but otherwise I've fielded them in hot,
> cold, dusty, wet, and dry environments and they seem to keep going.    It
> passes the initial self tetst but won't fully boot.  I suspect CF card
> failure.  Microsemi won't talk to me without an active support contract.
>
> Due to its death, I'm now working on a BeagleBone Black "cape" specifically
> for M12+ or Furuno timing receivers.  I appreciate COTS hardware, but I'm a
> hobbyist.   Mine will be cheaper, but I can't vouch for more reliable yet.
>
> -Bob
>
> On Wed, May 6, 2015 at 1:58 PM, Andrew Cooper <acooper at keck.hawaii.edu>
> wrote:
>
> > So, yes, our old TS2100's suffered the 1995 bug over the weekend like all
> > of the others in the world.  Kludged into working for the moment using
> 1PPS
> > and two units.
> >
> > I do need to buy a couple replacements, good time is critical around an
> > observatory, looking at a $16K purchase order.  We have quoted both the
> > SecureSync from SpectraCom and the S350 from Microsemi, both fully spec'd
> > out with IRIG and IEEE1588.
> >
> > I am not really a time expert, just an everyday electrical engineer.
> > Thrust into the problem three days ago.  I have learned a bit reading
> > through the Time Nuts archive... Thanks!
> >
> > Anything I should be aware of with these units.  Any opinions on this
> > purchase?
> >
> > Thanks for your advice,
> > Andrew
> >
> > Andrew Cooper
> > Electrical Engineer
> > W. M. Keck Observatory
> > 808-881-3862
> > mailto:acooper at keck.hawaii.edu
> >
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