[c-nsp] dead npe?

[Paul Cairney]

Hi, thanks for the suggestions.. various replies follow;

David A. Mack wrote:
> Hello!
> 	Try consoling into the router and breaking into ROMMON by
> sending a break after you see a message that contains "7200". At this
> point check to see if there is a boot image in bootflash with dir
> bootflash: It may be corrupt or not recognizing the NPE. From ROMMON,
> try to boot an image on a PCMCIA card with a known good image with "boot
> [disk|slot0|1]:'image-name'".

Didnt think to try break/rommon trick, will give that a shot. IO card 
and flash disk work fine with known good npe-300 thus pointing towards 
the npe its self. I shall give it a try before I inform the vendor tomorrow.

Chris Cappuccio wrote:
 > Dan Benson [dbenson at swingpad.com] wrote:
 >>PC100, 168PIN 128MB DIMMS.  You could get them at Compusa or on ebay, or
 >
 > I thought the NPE-175, 225 and 300 wanted PC-100, ECC, CAS latency 2 
(CL2)
 > memory.  That's what I've always used in them and it works great. 
The NPE
 > will complain on boot if you use CL3 RAM but may work :)

I had always thought it to require cas3 on the npe-300, and had been 
told that using cas2 could lead to random crashes over a few months 
though this does not seem to be widely reported and may be due to 
numerous belatedly identified ios bugs^Wcaveats. From what I can 
decipher from the labels of cisco parts i have available, 32mb and 64mb 
parts appear to be cas3 though crucial 128mb parts i have encountered 
are inconsistent in cas rating.


 >
Dan Benson wrote:
 > Sounds like bad Mem.  I have seen in the past that if the mem is say,
 > pc133 and not pc100, you will not get any response from the console of
 > the machine.  The mem has to go into the NPE a certain way on the 300
 > and 400's.
 > Refer to this doc on what RAM is fixed and what RAM is not:

2x crucial 128mb cas2 pc133 are working fine in known good npe-300, and 
I have swapped both banks of ram from that unit to the 'new' npe a 
couple of times.

I cba to look up the bank numbering, however looking from the handle 
side of the npe-300 the furthest right dimm slot (bank0, slot U0 iirc) 
is 'fixed' 32mb dimm and the other socket in that bank (U1) must remain 
un-populated. The left pair of dimm sockets is bank1 and can contain 
upto 2x 128 sdram dimm parts on the npe-300.

 > 
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/hw/routers/ps341/products_installation_guide_chapter09186a00801b33fb.html 

 >
 > It could be that the DIMMs have come unseated, or that the seller
 > swapped it before shipping the unit, (Not uncommon). They are basic
 > PC100, 168PIN 128MB DIMMS.  You could get them at Compusa or on ebay, or
 > as some may suggest, from Cisco.  I do not think this has anything to do
 > with your chassis and or cards at this point.  Check the seating of all

Repeated swapping with known good setup this npe was intended to be a 
spare for concur with this. Both ram banks have been swapped with good 
dimms to no avail, and the chassis is fine with its original npe

 > DIMMs and boot with just the NPE and the IOFE, have a machine connected
 > to the console port set to 9600, 8, N ,1 and look for a prompt..   RAM
 > or a dead NPE,   I have seen only 1 bad NPE  in 10 years.  Hope this
 > helps.. //db


Indeed, I may sound stupid for asking for confirmation to what appears 
pretty obvious however without any signs of physical damage and never 
having encountered a dead npe before I dont want to be mistaken in 
returning it to the vendor.

I am however still interested wither anyone cares to speculate what 
component failure could have caused what may have been a spontaneous 
failure, condition and packaging of the unit would corroborate the 
vendors claim it was unused (packing is = part however that is obviously 
no indication of its condition).

If it had been sat in a warehouse for Xyears without use until the 
vendor supposedly tested it prior to dispatch, why could it fail to boot 
in my chassis?

Thanks for the advise