X550 and X1250 - no boot - nothing

[tsmalmbe]

So. I had a working X550 with a 32G flash running. I wanted to trasnfer it to my x1250 (the one with 8 ports). I stop both servers and put my CF card in the new watchguard. "Watchguard Booting OS" is says. And nothing from my serial. Then I decided to go the other way, and just move the 4 ports from the x1250 to the x550 instead of flashing BIOS etc. etc. Unscrew, rescrew and we are done. Move the working CF card to the x550. "Pfsense B7 booting OS" - then nothing. Both machins produce one beep. With arrow up, I get all the way to "system halted" on the x1250 and to "good magic number" or "verifying CHS" on the x550. But just one beep. I then prepared a freedos image on one of the original sandisk 256 CF cards. Just one beep on both machines. With arrow up, I see the "restoring partition" and "good magic number" etc. also over the serial connection. But not the "three beeps", no boot, no nothing. I then wen on to remove the extra 4 ports from the x550 so now both watchguars have only 4 ports. Same thing, no boot. I also removed the battery for 2 minutes and tried again. Same thing, no boot.

Are these both now all of a sudden destroyed completely? Anything I can do?

[tsmalmbe]

I was able to get one of them to start once with a 64M card borrowed from an X700. Once.

[DeLorean]

You are using a old BIOS version.
Best to use BIOS version 8.1
With version 7 that you have, the BIOS don't configure the CF automatic,
and needs to be configured manually.
With version 8.1 , the CF card will be detected and configured automatic.

Grtz
DeLorean

[tsmalmbe]

@DeLorean:

Best to use BIOS version 8.1

And when the unit does not boot (as described), your suggestion to accomplish this is what?

[DeLorean]

@tsmalmbe:

@DeLorean:

Best to use BIOS version 8.1

And when the unit does not boot (as described), your suggestion to accomplish this is what?

BIOS updating is not done with or through pfSense, but with a CF card that boots into Freedos that contains the BIOS 8.1 file.
If you are new with pfSense, best is to read from the start with the pfSense guide available here, and scroll down to "Flashing the BIOS" :

https://doc.pfsense.org/index.php/PfSense_on_Watchguard_Firebox

The BIOS 8.1 can be downloaded from this site :
https://sites.google.com/site/pfsensefirebox/home/XEBIOS_81.BIN

When the CF card is prepared, copy the XEBIOS_81.BIN file to your CF card,
and proceed with the BIOS updating like descripted in the pfSense guide.
To minimize typing during the BIOS update, i always rename the BIOS file to a shorter name like BIOS81.BIN

After the BIOS update is done, you must remove the BIOS battery for 1 minute.

Grtz
DeLorean

[stephenw10]

If it won't boot a 64MB card it's probably not written the image correctly to the card. You might try zeroing out the card first:
https://doc.pfsense.org/index.php/Writing_Disk_Images#Cleaning_The_Target_Disk_.28optional.2C_but_recommended.29

Did it boot the FreeDOS image the one time it did boot? Or the original OS?

Steve