As background:
I built my very first server and nas with my first zimablade, running ZimaOS.
The experience has been a joy and they were fully operational 24/7, including with DDNS options for a couple of months.
I bought another ZimaBlade and some additional PCIE accessories for testing and experimentation purposes so my main Blade could keep running while I could try out some configurations that could inhibit the main Blades functions.
Here is where it went wrong:
When the new Blade arrived, I of course wanted to get it running, same as the server I already had running. I hadn’t checked in on its status for a day or two at that point, but up until then I had assumed everything to be well. I insert the RAM and plug in the Zima power adapter for the second one, and it just doesn’t turn on. Sometimes the red light does not turn on or only briefly blinks, sometimes it turns on, but I can see that the network connection is dead and I get no video output from the mini-DP.
So I check on my main Blade and want to plugin the PCIE network card. I power it off, insert the card and power it back on. And suddenly, here the same issues arise. No video output, no network i/o, it would seem the blade is just bricked.
As per this thread, I tried to reset the CMOS battery hoping that would solve my issues. It didn’t work. I have also noticed issues with the official USB-C power cables themselves. When I use different power cables, it seems that the Blade at least turns on (I see the lights coming on on the drive bay, the Blade itself and the network card if I plug it in.)
I have tried running just the Blade with minimal peripheries plugged in, even without the drive bay. It doesn’t work.
I can’t figure out what’s wrong and unfortunately haven’t heard back from support just yet.
Are the Blades bricked? Is something else wrong here? How come a freshly ordered blade and a blade that has been in operation for a month both “don’t work” anymore/at all?
Any help would be much appreciated. I really miss my NAS and Jellyfin, it’s become such an ever-present part in my daily life at this point
Have you checked the adapter? The trouble with the blade is that it only supports 12V. It is recommended to use a power supply that only outputs 12V instead of a 5V/12V switching power supply with a protocol. In addition, if you have removed the CMOS battery, you may need to wait for a minute for the first boot, and the device needs to be initialized.
Indeed, I have tried both a variety of unofficial adapters with varying voltages and the official ZimaBlade adapter with 12V/3A (I have two official ones). None have worked.
I removed the CMOS battery and waited a few minutes before reinsertion and a few more before first boot. The lights of the device turned on but otherwise no change, the Blades (both of them) still remained seemingly bricked.
Strangely, the power cables started working again, although I can’t figure out why they previously didn’t.
After some testing, it appears that plugging in too many items at once causes power issues. The ZimaBlade can not power up and remains bricked. The only way to solve it was to take out both the RAM and CMOS battery for a while. Insert the RAM and then the CMOS battery. Wait another few minutes. Connect a smaller amount of things and power up again. (I did have to get replacement CMOS batteries but that’s fine.)
The setup that worked was:
ZimaBlade, PowerCable, Ethernet, no PCI-E card!, one bay featuring two 4TB SSDs (2SATA+power cable).
The setup that didn’t work: Same as above but a network card in the PCI-E slot. I tried both of these.
The issue now is that I have my main server running again, that is great. But I still have slow connection speeds which slows down network activity significantly.
I can’t figure out how to get it working with upgraded network capability, hence… only largely resolved.
The Cmos battery also stores the device’s power on and off status. So if the battery is powered off, the device’s power on status will be lost. At this time, the device will not directly start up when powered on (because it does not remember what the previous status was). Measuring whether the battery voltage is maintained at around 3V, or directly replacing the battery, would be my first recommendation.
However, after reading your subsequent feedback, is the problem likely caused by an incompatible network card?
Since those network cards were part of the ZimaBlade network bundles, I doubt it. While I am having a couple of issues trying to improve my setup, I now have both servers running and doing the minimum essential tasks I require of them.
