SG-5100 No Boot and No Console

[drpreece]

SG-5100 purchased in 2019. Has had minimal issues until 20MAY2023. It failed to complete boot-up after upgrade to PFSense 23.x several months ago - that issue was resolved with a new clean install from a USB stick. Performance became intermittent several weeks ago with individual devices intermittently losing connectivity. On 20MAY2023, the entire network went dark.

SG-5100 indicator lights show only green power (bottom of three on SG-5100). Power button shows green. WAN + LAN connections show connection but no data (no blinking indicator). Cycled power using power button. No change in operation or indicators. Connected PC to console COM3 115200 baud via Putty. Connection shows established but screen shows only solid green cursor in upper left and no response to any keyboard input. Cycled power via power button with console connected - no bios / boot sequence displayed on Putty. No change in operation or indicators. Tried unit reset via reset button per SG-5100 manual procedure. No change in operation or indicators.

After researching on-line, assumed failure of onboard eMMC and installed M.2 SATA 64GB. No change in operation or indicators upon power-up after drive installation.

Power supply output is stable at 12.3 Vdc per voltmeter check. Have left unit powered on for over 1 hour after drive installation and reboot - no change in operation or indicators.

Have submitted a ticket to Netgate support - but not too hopeful given unit EOL status.

If you have any thoughts or suggestions on how to improve the status of my 5100, please advise.

Thank you!

[rcoleman-netgate]

@drpreece I see your ticket and I am going to make this reply to you there as well...

If you're handy with a heat gun there might be an option... but I have a dead 5100 waiting for me at home to run a few tests on... if I am successful I am going to see about getting a guide published... but I don't want to put more details into this at this time because it's a destructive process that I am doing completely out of pocket... and working on a hunch (I had to buy the device off eBay, even).

But what you're describing is what we've seen to indicated a dead eMMC and a mainboard that will not stop looking for it to respond in certain ways at the initial boot. For that we do not have a resolution (at this time).

[gabacho4]

For what it is worth, I have a couple 5100s that I'm swapping out that I'd be glad to sell for much less than those ebay prices. I upgraded then to 128gig mSATA drives before any eemc issues so no problems there at all. Ping me if interested.

[markster]

@rcoleman-netgate
Just happened to read this thread since I own SG-5100. I have mine for about 1 1/2 years and very happy with the hardware.
As soon as I received it I switched to SSD storage and use ZFS. I configured BIOS to boot from SSD. But the fact mentioned here worries me a bit. The fact that during boot, software looks for emmc even if I am using SSD and if the emmc fails the boot would fail. That should be fixed with the firmware update. Is there really no solution for this issue?

[stephenw10]

If you are not booting from eMMC the system never writes to it so it's never going to get anywhere near the ware limit. You should have no problems.

Steve