[WeeHappyPixie]

Still no luck.I have even taken thedrive out and wiped it with the seagate tools.

I think I now have a brick.
John

[svcglobal]

Originally Posted by WeeHappyPixie Still no luck.I have even taken the drive out and wiped it with the seagate tools. I think I now have a brick. John

Hello John,

Very sorry to read that.
Did you tried with a different USB pen drive? Take one from one friend if you do not have another, format FAT (not FAT32) and save the firmware on it.
I do not think that you have a brick there (well, not yet).

Sergio

[WeeHappyPixie]

Hi

Yeah I a tried 5 different USB sticks all formatted as FAT. I'm an IT administraor and an electronics engineer. I'm convinced the unit is not flashing correctly even though it says installation complete.

I assume that the battery thas mentioned in the post is the capacitor in the middle of the board as I cant see no other battery.

John

[svcglobal]

Originally Posted by WeeHappyPixie Hi Yeah I a tried 5 different USB sticks all formatted as FAT. I'm an IT administraor and an electronics engineer. I'm convinced the unit is not flashing correctly even though it says installation complete. I assume that the battery thas mentioned in the post is the capacitor in the middle of the board as I cant see no other battery. John

Exactly as me but I am retired now.
And yes, that is the 3.0v battery. The main purpose of have it is for keeping running the clock even without the power. But I think that it also retains some system registers in memory.
Really its hard to believe that your Ellion is dead but I can't recall any other way to bring it to life again.
The Ellion support sometimes do post in this forum and hope that he will help you with more tips.
Good luck,

Sergio

[WeeHappyPixie]

Thanks Sergio,

Personally I have found Ellions support very poor. They rarely ever return emails.

I'm convinced I got a brick.

John

[svcglobal]

Some news here.
Since yesterday, my 350H starting a erratic behavior, with consecutive freezing during NDAS data download or upload to/from computer.
This problem started to be more frequent just replacing the 250MB Seagate for one Samsung of 500MB.
So, I started to measure the voltage of both power supplies and found 11.97v and 4.68v just on the HD pins.
The worst occur when connecting another one of 120GB in the USB port: The 5v supply show only 4.55v.
Both power supplies are running in switching mode and controlled by an IC 1509 PWM @ 150KHz each one.
The output voltage on the PS filter capacitor of 470mF x 16v where about 4.98v so the drop is related to the printed circuit board tracks and thru holes from up and down side.
So, I decided to increase the PS voltage to 5.20v in order to have the correct voltage on the HD power input changing the SMD resistor of 3Kohm to 3.3Kohm - it is very tiny and my advise is to NOT do that I did if you do not have the proper skill. It is connected to the pin 3 of the IC.

The Ellion is stable now, no more freezing at all.
More details please PM me.

[Elneka]

Interest studycase.

Did you also measure the voltage or voltage-drop between the connectors at the Hor. and Vert. PCB's?
Because voltage loss of 0.3 Volt is pretty much!

I've disconnect and connect the Hor. and Vert. PCB's a few times, last week, and maybe there could be some flux (just thinking) in the connectors (male,female), because my Ellion works stable at the moment,
just like right after purchase!
No Black-Screens sofar.

EDIT:
I've measured the voltage and i have 11.76V at the HDD connector,
and 4.86V this is acceptable.

[svcglobal]

Yes, the drop over the PCB tracks is huge due the high current of 5v from internal HD and USB ports (I also have one 120GB 2.5" connected).

Along the 5V track (it should have more that 40cm long approx., start to end) there are several thru holes passing from up/down sides but, exactly in the power supply PCB, there is a MosFET serially connected with the 5V track output (must be a 5V switch for power good signal) that only have a single hole.
So, I used a wire-wrap wire to bypass this section and almost 0.1v was rescued.
I my case, using a Seagate 250GB, the 5V current is huge (over .75A) and the best power supply design should have a remote voltage sensing exactly over the high demand device to correct the inevitable voltage drop - very easy to do, needs another wire-wrap wire and I intend to do this next week.

BTW, the switching power supply is very well engineered, it lacks only some prototype cleaning, you know.

[Elneka]

Ohhh boy!

I've made some PCB's in the past, and I have ever avoided Via's in a current-rail by design, only in a small signal trace.
But only one Via in a +5V supply-trace (or even GND) this is 'bad'
this must be 2 or more!

Oke for now, before I ever do a FW-flash,
I'll study this case, because if 5V drop's during a FW-flash,
or even a bad Via (not the first time) what happens next!

[leanovi]

Originally Posted by WeeHappyPixie Thanks Sergio, Personally I have found Ellions support very poor. They rarely ever return emails. I'm convinced I got a brick. John

Hi, John,
did you fix your brick finally?
I have a similar one, but cannot put the device in re-flash mode after an interrupted F/W upgrade. Any lessons learned how to un-brick?
Thanks, Ovidiu.