Ascend Archive
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(ASCEND) Re: Max200 rebooting itself - a piece of junk!



On Thu, Nov 13, 1997 at 10:31:10AM -0600, Brian Engle wrote:
>  I too share your frustration.  IMHO the Max 200+ is a piece of junk.
> 
>> I have been dealing with problems with the Max 200 for over three months
>> now, and Ascend's TAC and Engineering doesn't seem to have a clue.  I have
>> tried running every piece of code from 5.0A through 5.0Ap33 to no 
>> avail and was even given an engineering release to try (5.0Ae200.m2).
>> 
>> The problem that I have seen is that the box locks up completely at least
>> once a day.  All LED indicators go active on the front, the ethernet
>> interface does not respond and the only fix is to restart the box with a
>> power cycle.
>> 
>> I have been told everything from the standard "Upgrade to the latest 
>> release of code"; that there is an oscillator problem with the Max 
>> 200+; and that there is a problem with the PCMCIA to bus interface.
>> 
>> I only have the Ascend BRI PCMCIA card in the box and would be afraid 
>> to see what would happen if I were trying to process inbound calls on 
>> modems.
>
>We have seen such problems as well. Surprisingly most of them disappeared
>when we activated syslog on the unit (in order to see better where it
>crashes) and it went from 1 crash per day to "what the heck is up, the
>customer didn't call for 2 weeks now" partial satisfaction. It is not
>completely stable (<cynical>but which Ascend box is anyway</cynical>)
>but appears to be much more stable then before.
>
>> Potential boat anchor material.
>
>Bad enough - yes. We don't advertise it any longer and strongly recommend
>users to think twice about buying one if they got the information on its
>existence elsewhere. This is hard because some 4-S0, One-Modem-Card-Only
>Max derivate (remarkable cheaper than the MX18) is missing and the 200
>doesn't fit this gap at all.

We have 10 MAX200+ units serving as routers in remote country offices.
We would have used P50s, but ISDN is not available in these locations, so
a PSTN dial-on-demand solution was chosen.  It amazes me that Ascend does
not do the equivalent of a 'NetModem' - an inexpensive P25 style box with
an internal PSTN modem instead of ISDN.  There would sure be a market for
it.

Anyway, we get numerous hangs on our MAX200s.  Most times I can dial the
box and get a CONNECT 28800 message from the PCMCIA modem, but no console
prompt.  Sometimes it doesnt even answer.  Ive tried a number of 5.0A 
releases.  5.0Ap3 seemed to be slightly more stable than anything since.

We will be looking at junking our Max200s as soon as an alternative 
presents itself.

Regards

Jim
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