Looking for SyncServer S350 SAASM cf card image

[drdmr]

Hi Sandra, I'm glad the voltage measurements were helpful. And now, I have more photos! These JPG files aren't as big as the earlier ones, but it may still take more than one post to upload them all.

[drdmr]

Here are the rest of the photos -- all in only two posts this time!

The PCB looks pretty simple, but I'll be curious to know what software, raw material, machine, and/or vendor you use to design and fabricate or source your own version of the board.

Dean

[drdmr]

Just wondering... If you use a similarly thick aluminum heat-sink, would you have room for a custom wire harness that creates the right connections -- including that one resistor, of course? It wouldn't look as nice as a PCB, but if it works, so what?

The PCB looks pretty simple, but I'll be curious to know what software, raw material, machine, and/or vendor you use to design and fabricate or source your own version of the board.

[Marck]

Hello.  I am an absolute beginner with anything time related.  But I have been able to lay my hands on a retired s300.  Well it’s a retired spare so let’s call it new old stock.  I powered it up today and have updated the firmware to 2.80.1.  It seems to fail when I try to take it to the last available version 2.83.2.  Seeing that the firmware files are the same for the s300 and s350 I was wondering if anyone has had a similar problem.

The reason I grabbed this one was to have a cool clock in my rack (I know it’s probably a waste) but is there anything else that can be done with them that is a little more useful or interesting ?

Thanks
M

[smgvbest]

Hello.  I am an absolute beginner with anything time related.  But I have been able to lay my hands on a retired s300.  Well it’s a retired spare so let’s call it new old stock.  I powered it up today and have updated the firmware to 2.80.1.  It seems to fail when I try to take it to the last available version 2.83.2.  Seeing that the firmware files are the same for the s300 and s350 I was wondering if anyone has had a similar problem.

The reason I grabbed this one was to have a cool clock in my rack (I know it’s probably a waste) but is there anything else that can be done with them that is a little more useful or interesting ?

Thanks
M

I did not have any issues in upgrading mine to the latest version
What was the actual error you go during the upgrade?

[smgvbest]

You are awesome,   thank you.
Those pics are far more than I had hoped for.

I will design and have the board fab'd by OHSPARK most likely.   international shipping is a pain right now otherwise I'd use JCLPCB or PCBWAY.
The aluminum heatsink/spacer I will fab in my home shop..

And here's the pinout of the board,  I was off on a few things

P1
1) FACMOS (10M)
2) VSS (GND)
3) FREQ CTRL (DAC)
4) VDD (15V)
5) SERVICE
6) LOCK
7) VCC (5V)

P3
1) DIN (Rx)
2) DOUT (Tx)
3) VSS (GND)

Here's my image of my working out the pinout

Here are the rest of the photos -- all in only two posts this time!

The PCB looks pretty simple, but I'll be curious to know what software, raw material, machine, and/or vendor you use to design and fabricate or source your own version of the board.

Dean

[smgvbest]

I do not see why it would not work.   just make sure exposed wires are insulated is all

Just wondering... If you use a similarly thick aluminum heat-sink, would you have room for a custom wire harness that creates the right connections -- including that one resistor, of course? It wouldn't look as nice as a PCB, but if it works, so what?

The PCB looks pretty simple, but I'll be curious to know what software, raw material, machine, and/or vendor you use to design and fabricate or source your own version of the board.

[drdmr]

Hi Sandra, I'm glad I could help! It was easy after your earlier posts helped me understand what you needed. And what kind of Mechanical Engineer would I be if I couldn't remove, separate, and reassemble the Rubidium oscillator and PCB?

I've broken some things mechanically in my life, but I've probably ruined more things with electrical or software mistakes. Right now, I have a Spectracom SecureSync that lost its mind because I flashed the wrong EEPROM image to it. I hope to fix it someday, if possible.

Thanks for the information on PCB fabricators. I haven't used such services before, but I might in the future. For now, I look forward to a future post about your S350 running with the Rubidium oscillator!

Dean

You are awesome,   thank you.
Those pics are far more than I had hoped for.

I will design and have the board fab'd by OHSPARK most likely.   international shipping is a pain right now otherwise I'd use JCLPCB or PCBWAY.
The aluminum heatsink/spacer I will fab in my home shop..

[smgvbest]

Here's a little bit of progress.  getting the board lined up with the mounting holes and connect.
I modeled everything up in fusion360 then imported the pcb and test fit. 
I also 3d printed the board and verified the fit with a real SA22



I have to finish the actual PCB now
I am adding leds for the 1PPSOUT, LOCK and SERVICE indicator and MMCX connecors for the FACMOS, 1PPSIN and 1PPSOUT signals.

[cg@chilia.com]

Dear Sandra,

sorry for the very late answer! As mentioned, I have two S350 SAASM but it took me some weeks to get them from the office, since we are under lock-down  .

Yes, I would love to get a copy of the CF card to get mine running again  As there are already a lot of pictures of the internals let me know if you need more!

Best,
  Christian

[smgvbest]

here's links to the 2 CFCARDS in the S350
CF1 is the main boot card
https://drive.google.com/file/d/17je_pVXbgNyEHbuGzgPGaOMusEzYM7Iq/view?usp=sharing

CF is the postgress data card
https://drive.google.com/file/d/12jmjFg6OLldDHe0OP9ZgYA3CM0YDHAL_/view?usp=sharing


This is pre-hacked,   admin password is the default and Root is the same password.
to enable all features,  run the seeprom and do the option setup to turn everthing on.   for SAASM just turn it on instead of GPS  which I believe it will do anyway

[cg@chilia.com]

Perfekt, Sandra thanks so much!

The image burned perfectly to my CF cards but I wasn't able to boot the S350 that I have here. Really strange: I tried many different CF cards e.g. the original ones, 1GB, 4GB, 2GB of different brands and no luck. Seems this unit is broken.

I can try the other units soon, so I'll keep you posted. BTW, did anyone ever observer the strange "0" or "G" letter in the Display after it gets stuck at "Loading OS . . . "?

Best,
  Christian

[smgvbest]

I dumped from a live system and given the screen I think its possible that it may be stuck in a fsck.
if you have a CF Reader and access to a linux system you can run fsck /dev/sd?  where ? is the letter assigned to the CFCARD

other than that if you can plug into the front RS232 interface and get a root prompt you might be able to run it that way but not sure

Perfekt, Sandra thanks so much!

The image burned perfectly to my CF cards but I wasn't able to boot the S350 that I have here. Really strange: I tried many different CF cards e.g. the original ones, 1GB, 4GB, 2GB of different brands and no luck. Seems this unit is broken.

I can try the other units soon, so I'll keep you posted. BTW, did anyone ever observer the strange "0" or "G" letter in the Display after it gets stuck at "Loading OS . . . "?

Best,
  Christian

[cg@chilia.com]

Initially I wasn't able to get the serial console working because my unit was communicating at 4800 instead of 9600 baud - for whatever reason.

You were perfectly right, that did the trick! Whenever I burned the images there were some errors on the filesystem on both cards and it got stuck with "unable to mount root". Repairing that with fsck -y /dev/sdX{1,2,5,6,7} on a linux system worked like a charm.

Looking forward hooking up my Caesium source to the 10MHz input and to see if it outperforms my self-made Rubidium NTP server 

P.S.: I think the root password is not set in the image, at least I couldn't find it in the shadows file.

[notfaded1]

I have two 200 series units one with an x72 Rb in it.  I just scored a 350 unit that's hanging on the boot just like the other did here.  I'm sure it's got fsck issues too.  I'm interested in your PCB to add higher speed Sr.22 Rb to this one too.

On another note I have another Ublox LEA-8T GNSS disciplined Spectratime SRO-100 Rb I'm going to review and test just like I did with the LEA-6T disciplined SRS SR620 Rb recently.  I'm thinking it's going to be really nice as well.  I'm considering buying the updated FSA3011 DMTD stability analyzer for testing phase noise.  I'd like a phasestation but that's not practical.

[notfaded1]

here's links to the 2 CFCARDS in the S350
CF1 is the main boot card
https://drive.google.com/file/d/17je_pVXbgNyEHbuGzgPGaOMusEzYM7Iq/view?usp=sharing

CF is the postgress data card
https://drive.google.com/file/d/12jmjFg6OLldDHe0OP9ZgYA3CM0YDHAL_/view?usp=sharing


This is pre-hacked,   admin password is the default and Root is the same password.
to enable all features,  run the seeprom and do the option setup to turn everthing on.   for SAASM just turn it on instead of GPS  which I believe it will do anyway

I'm going to try this with my new 350!  Oh I used to live in OH btw.  I lived in northern suburbs of Cincinnati Montgomery/Loveland area.  Then I went to OSU and lived in Columbus for a while.  I live in the desert of Arizona in Scottdale now... I don't miss the snow and rain much!  Love it out here.  My whole family moved out here now.

I'll order the board from OSHpark if you set it up there.

Bill

[smgvbest]

Glad it worked.   i'll see about mounting the images to my VM and run fsck on them to clean them up so it doesn't happen in the future.
the password s/b set the same as the admin password but not sure i set SSH to allow root logons.  which is a no-no anyways.
i had set it while working on the unit to allow while I was hacking it, this I backed it out once I was done

glad it go you going

Initially I wasn't able to get the serial console working because my unit was communicating at 4800 instead of 9600 baud - for whatever reason.

You were perfectly right, that did the trick! Whenever I burned the images there were some errors on the filesystem on both cards and it got stuck with "unable to mount root". Repairing that with fsck -y /dev/sdX{1,2,5,6,7} on a linux system worked like a charm.

Looking forward hooking up my Caesium source to the 10MHz input and to see if it outperforms my self-made Rubidium NTP server 

P.S.: I think the root password is not set in the image, at least I couldn't find it in the shadows file.

[notfaded1]

I wonder if I'll get the same boot error with the images?  I'm going to give it a try.  I've never had a 350 before only 200's.  I'm not going to put this on the internet so I'm not as worried about the root password in the beginning and could always change it later.  Symmetricom didn't have a reputation for really secure devices if you read the history on these anyhow.  I'm interested in comparing the output of 10Mhz and PPS to my disciplined Rb's.  I assume the output is from the GPS module and not from the Rb if it's installed from the outputs?  (unless it's in holdover... ofc)

Bill

[smgvbest]

well the GPS only outputs a 1pps signal which disciplines the 10mhz so i would think that the Rb would be from the SA22 going through the FPGA and using the 1PPS to discipline would go to the output but I haven't checked.   would be interesting to know for user

I have a lucent GPSDO that I am feeding into my for now which normally just runs my lab.

[smgvbest]

So while I wait for boards to arrive

I've been playing around with loading the CFCARD into a vmware image and have partial success



It starting up but when I login I get a fpga fail and it won't logon
so trying to figure out what a logon is doing trying to access the fpga so I can stop it

The idea here is once it's in a virtual machine.  I can hopefully load gcc and buildtools then build ntp, apache etc so current versions
but not until I get past this issue

[smgvbest]

Looking for some help
my PTP function has stopped working,  I believe it to be a network issue as the service is up

would someone as root issue these commands and post the results
netstat -ln
iptables --list
routel
sysctl -a

TIA
Sandra

[drdmr]

Hi Sandra, the output is too long to paste into one post, so I'm trying to attach a text file with the output from all four commands -- hope it works!

FYI, my SyncServer is on 192.168.1.13, and its PTP server is on 192.168.1.27. -- Dean

[smgvbest]

Hi Dean,   Thank you for posting.
quick glance our iptables look different so I'll have to look closer there
the sysctl stuff is virtually identical
hopefuly I'll see something that makes me go ummmmm

[drdmr]

Out of curiosity, what specific symptoms or failures are you seeing? Did the PTP slave stop seeing the master? Did the SyncServer stop communicating with the slave, and/or do you see anomalies in any of the web status screens? Can you ping the SyncServer's PTP port, etc.?

FYI, Meinberg has a free program for monitoring PTP nodes and traffic, here: https://www.meinbergglobal.com/english/sw/ptp-track-hound.htm

[smgvbest]

ptpd is up and running but no slaves.   my slaves timeout trying to connect.
 all the status screens say everything is fine

just tried and I can not ping eth1 which in my case is 192.168.1.148
eth0 is pingable at 192.168.1.147

so a routing issue of some kind
hummm