Sam440 startup problems

[skurk]

Hi all,

Just got the final parts for my Sam, so I started assembling it.  However, it appears that I am unable to "power up" the Sam.

I decided to strip it down to the bare minimum, which is:
- Sam440ep board
- 90W PicoPSU
- USB keyboard
- LCD monitor (DVI)

When I connect the power, the bright blue led on the board is immediately lit.  If I hit the power switch, the power led is lit.  No action on the keyboard, no image on the monitor.  Just to make sure, I tried another monitor with the same results.  The monitor simply goes to sleep after a few seconds, even if I try to "wake it up".

I tried connecting a HDD, but it never spins up.  Same with the DVD-ROM. This makes me think that I may have missed something cruicial.

Maybe a jumper?  Maybe something else?  The manual is quite minimal, so I'm currently a bit puzzled.

Any ideas?

[brianb]

Can you try your power supply on another motherboard?  Maybe it's not putting out enough juice, or not all the proper voltages.

[brianb]

Can you try your power supply on another motherboard?  Maybe it's not putting out enough juice, or not all the proper voltages.

[Matt_H]

Try another PSU. Is 90W really enough for the Sam?

[gazgod]

My sam runs very well on 80w.

Double check the memory simm is inserted correctly, saw a sam exhibiting these symptoms at the Coventry show and it was the memory not quite seated properly.

Gaz

[skurk]

The PicoPSU was taken from a working Efika system, so I guess it should be allright.  Anyway, 90W should be enough to run just the motherboard w/o any dvd/disk attached.

I did also reseat the memory once, but I'll inspect it tonight.  I also got a tip to try VGA instead, so I'll do that while testing with another PSU.

Thanks for the tips everyone, I'll keep you posted.

[Andeda]

Here is some values that i have measured with my Etech PM300 energy meter.
I have a 200W PSU in my SAM.

Standby without switching the SAM on 23W
booting up OS4.1 52W
Playing DVD's 73W
Normal use, etc. web browsing 53W

[skurk]

Ok, a quick update -

- Reseated RAM several times, nothing
- Tried with another PSU, 250W AOpen ATX, no luck
- Tried with DVI->VGA adapter, nada
- Keyboard does not respond, no LEDs lit

So, I wired a nullmodem cable and got the UBOOT output at 115k2/N81, so it's definitely alive:

U-Boot 1.3.1 (Dec  1 2008 - 14:01:05)

CPU:   AMCC PowerPC 440EP Rev. C at 533.333 MHz (PLB=133, OPB=66, EBC=66 MHz)
       I2C boot EEPROM enabled
       Bootstrap Option H - Boot ROM Location I2C (Addr 0x52)
       Internal PCI arbiter enabled, PCI async ext clock used
       32 kB I-Cache 32 kB D-Cache
Board: Sam440ep
I2C:   ready
DRAM:  512 MB

But what bothers me is that I'm still not getting any video output.

Any more ideas?

Anyone know the absolutely minimal requirements for the Sam to give video output?

[Bazzaq]

I don't have a sam, but had a problem recently with a pc where the ram was faulty and would give no display even though it booted.. No error beeps from the motherboard either which was odd..

got some more ram to try?

[StarejMraf]

I had the same problem, but i changed PSU and SAM works fine. But probably is necessary to connect at least one disk to SAM S-ATA port. With an inappropriate PSU SAM works only after inserting the CD into the drive.
Or maybe wrong S-ATA power cable??

[skurk]

StarejMraf wrote:
With an inappropriate PSU SAM works only after inserting the CD into the drive.

That worked...!  And I'm puzzled.

Anyway, off to install AOS4.1 :-)  Thanks everyone!

[skurk]

Follow-up problem: Media Toolbox doesn't seem to recognize the 250G WD disk I'm using.  It's just the CD on the list for the controller.  The CD is on J23, the hdd on J20.  The disk is detected and listed during UBOOT.

Any gotcha's I should be aware of?

[skurk]

Change of hdd solved it.  Apparently Media Toolbox didn't like my 250G Western Digital disk (WD2500AAJS).  A 250G Maxtor (7L250SO) worked perfectly.

Formatting and installing as we speak.