Atlas 890 Controller Board

[Anonymous]

I just purchased a used Atlas 890, first one; I'm very familiar with Atlas 550, 800 and 830 units.

My problem is, the 890 doesn't boot properly, with a different set of LED lights showing, each time I reboot it, and it only let me in to the interface a couple times, and even then didn't faithfully keep its IP address.

I had replaced the Power Supply, thinking that was the problem with the LED lights, but that didn't resolve it, so now I'm thinking it's the Controller Board.  On the Atlas 890, is the backplane just a bunch of connections, and the intelligence resides in the Controller Board, rather than a motherboard?  I can get a replacement used Controller Board, but honestly, for a few more dollars, I can get another Atlas 890, so I want to verify if what I've experienced sounds like a Controller Board issue?

Thanks

[Anonymous]

The controller is the "brains" of the ATLAS 890. Before you replace the controller, though you might see if you can get the ATLAS to boot up into Bootstrap and try loading new Firmware. It may be that it is simply corrupted and needs to be re-flashed. If you connect your Terminal to the ADMIN port on the controller card, and then power up the ATLAS while holding down the front ACO button.

If you can't get into bootstrap or loading new FW doesn't resolve the issue, then you'll have to replace the controller card.

Hope this helps,

Patrick

[Anonymous]

Thanks for the assist...will give it a shot.

[Anonymous]

It was unpredictable; when I had my terminal connected, and held the ACO button during bootup, it presented the option to Force Download/Press ENTER...sometimes pressing ENTER allowed me to the menu, although moving the arrows down to the Utility option proved unsuccessful; other times, pressing ENTER never brought up the menu, and instead the Initializing ROM routine started.

By the way, the brief times the menu did appear, I was able to see that the firmware is currently A02.

[Anonymous]

It sounds like you may have had your flow control set. Flow control needs to be set to NONE.

The current FW for the 890 is A.10. The BOOT ROM version may be A.02, but the initial released FW was A.04.

The "Firmware Revision" is about the 4th line down in the SYSTEM INFO.

As I mentioned, if you aren't able to flash the controller, or flashing it doesn't resolve the issue, then the controller needs to be replaced.

[Anonymous]

Patrick,

  I have acquired another Controller board, and followed the Bootstrap

procedure to set it back to factory default, and with that board,

everything is running fine on the Atlast 890, and I was able to update

the firmware as well to A10.

  My question is, my co-worker Rudi Machilek, had said that he was of

the opinion that AdTran supports these cards for a lifetime, would you

honor that, even though I'm not the original purchaser, or should I just

recycle the 'bad' Controller card?

  Thanks for all your help.

Jim

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[Anonymous]

Jim,

The "for a lifetime" is a bit of an overstatement, but as long as it is in production (which as of this writing the ATLAS 890 controller card is still in production) you can send it in for repair. If it is out of warranty then there is a charge for the repair - and the warranty is determined by the serial number, and when that SN was sold by ADTRAN.

Hope that helps,

Patrick

[Anonymous]

OK, thanks for the heads-up.

Jim

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