C-200 Fails to boot after power failure

[GrabbaTheButt]

My dad had a power failure at his house last night and now his PCH will not boot (and yes he had it on a power strip that should have protected it.)

We have tried a complete cold boot and the unit powers on (steady red) then when the power switch is pushed, it turns white as expected but the boot process seems to interupt and restart.

The power button goes to flashing red, then back to white and this continues endlessly.

I'm not sure how to proceed at this point so any suggestions on what to try would be very appreciated.

[halfelite]

power supply is toast. You can order a new one from popcornhour.com if you want to test to make sure its the power supply you can hook a computer atx power supply up to it.

Also a power strip will do nothing for power cutting in and out, It will just protect against a surge, Sometimes brown outs cause more damage then a little surge when when you are at normal peak current but keep sagging.

[westom]

(08-17-2012 07:18 PM)GrabbaTheButt Wrote:  My dad had a power failure at his house last night and now his PCH will not boot (and yes he had it on a power strip that should have protected it.)

That power strip did exactly what the manufacturer said it would do. Read its spec numbers. It does not claim to protection from that type of transient. And, in some cases, has even made damage easier.

The light implies damage elsewhere inside - not its power supply. Damage is usually on an outgoing path such as a NIC port. Without more information, nobody can say more.

[GrabbaTheButt]

So one answer saying its the power supply and another saying it not...

My Dad is coming into town next week and will bring his PCH with him. I'll try the idea of swapping in a comp ATX power supply to see if that clears the issue.

Otherwise I'll try PCH support number.... what are folks experinece with that?

[westom]

(08-24-2012 01:07 AM)GrabbaTheButt Wrote:  So one answer saying its the power supply and another saying it not...

Not exactly. The 'other' answer says a supply is one of many suspects and probably not the primary suspect. a) One minute with a multimeter creates numbers so that others can say exactly what is defective. Or b) just replace good parts (shotgun) until something works.

[GrabbaTheButt]

Ok mystery solved.

Dad brought his C-200 over today and after taking the power supply out to look for bad capacitors and finding none (man those things look like they were assembled by monkeys on crack with thermal glue sprayed around seemingly at random).

Put the PS back in to see exactly what the symptoms were..alternate white and orange flashing on the power button, a red flashing diode on the mainboard, and two lights (one green one amber) flashing on the NIC.

While checking for loose connections I happen to pop the SATA HD out of the bay and.....POW problem solved. PCH starts normally. Swapped the SATA drive from my unit and Dads started fine, swapped his into my PCH and had the same symptoms he was.

So.. all down to a SATA drive dying. Though I still find it odd that caused the PCH to abort its boot cycle.

Thanks for everyones help.