AP7900 won't come up unless I use reset

[Anonymous user]

I nabbed a couple of AP7900s from an estate sale recently. One works flawlessly, but the other I've had this really weird problem with...

When I first plugged it in, the orange light above the display lit, and it never fully powered up. I even left it like this for 10 minutes with the same result. I don't have a console cable, so I don't know what's going on in the background. I had an idea to do a 30-30-30 reset on it using the button on the front of the unit, and it finally came up! I immediately thought to update the firmware as both of the units are on older firmware. I found some threads and guides and went about updating. However, it failed on the very last reset, so I had to use the trick to upload the file manually via FTP to get it working again. But even after a firmware update, if the unit loses power for more than about 30 seconds, it won't come back up unless I hold reset down while plugging it in. 

I realize this unit is old and outdated at this point. Just checking to see if anyone has any ideas on what could possibly be wrong. When I do bring it up using the reset method, it stays up unless I unplug it from power for more than about 30 seconds...

Any suggestions?

[Terry_Kennedy_apc]

It could be either the network management card side of things or the relay board microcontroller side. The only way to really tell is to use a console cable and see what the management card thinks is going on. You should see "Stat : P+ N+ A+" and "Switched Rack PDU: Communication Established", assuming you have a network cable connected (otherwise you might see a "N?" status). If you don't have three + signs in the P/N/A status, try re-doing the firmware update. If you see something other than "Communication Established" (like "Searching for a ..."), that's an issue with the relay board microcontroller side. Unfortunately, the only real way to deal with that would be to RMA the unit (if in warranty, which yours probably aren't).

You could also try restting the device to factory defaults (using the console cable and the System / Tools menu option), though it is unlikely that has anything to do with the problem.

[BillP · Accepted solution]

The only thing that came to my mind was what Terry sort of mentioned eventioned - it is possible internal communication has been lost between the Network Management Interface and the relay boards. The network management interface is required to intialize the relays and close them to pass power. If the two can't talk, then you can see strange outlet behavior.

What you described regarding the solid amber LED also could relate to a display board that couldn't initialize. The pinhole reset button on the front, if pressed and released once, will do a soft reboot on the management interface. The other thing it is used for is the password reset procedure but there is still no holding involved. So, any behavior you see by pressing this button or holding that or the gray "control" button typically used to operation the 7 segment display is not intended and I am not sure what it'd be doing.