russound sms3 repalcement

wizzbizz

Got the new board in so have a single channel system. The renet dosent appear to be working not sure what the problem is

prophead

The bios settings could have disabled the serial port.  Or the wire is slightly askew on the motherboard pins.

I was hoping that the board would allow more than a single channel.

I do have some additional things to consider if I had you email or some way to send/ftp a file or two to a common location.  Stuff about backup/restore and changing the cd/rom.

Glad to see it is starting to work.

prophead

If it would help I could give you the bios settings that are currently in use on my SMS3.  The IRQ/DMA mapping may be switched putting the expected port on the back of the board instead of on the header.  The R-net and network features work on mine just it just does not have the extra stereo outputs and the composite video output.  Would like to get video output working just to see the web page on the HAI touch screens.

wizzbizz

any help would be fantastic

prophead

To get to the BIOS settings you need to plug in a monitor and keyboard.  The keyboard goes into the purple connector on the back.  Power up and while the system starts to boot hold the delete key and the BIOS screen will appear.

The serial port IRQs are disabled/enabled under this selection
                                     p { margin-bottom: 0.08in; }  Power Management Setup

                                        p { margin-bottom: 0.08in; }-- IRQ Activities
          IRQ3 (COM 2)    [Disabled]

          IRQ4 (COM 1)    [Enabled]


I have tried it with only Com1 Enabled and with both Com1 and Com2 Enabled.  It does not matter to the R-Net

You must be very careful not to damage the chip or connecter but may put the BIOS chip from the original SMS3 main board in the new board.  This does not make any difference functionally as far as I have seen either way but does restore the post screen native to the original SMS3.  

To watch Red Hat linux post its loading activities press F2 once the Post screen comes up.

To go much further you will need to provide me with some way to email you some more lengthly documentation I have put together over the last year.

prophead

p { margin-bottom: 0.08in; }  R-Net connection to mainboard


Connection of the R-Net interface board to the main board is done with a 3 wire asynchronous cable.  Two of the wires are in a three slot plastic plug and the third is outside of the plug.  The connection to the main board is on the Com2 connector as marked on the main board.  Looking from the rear of the SMS3, the black plug goes over the three right-rear pins of the Com2 connector.  That would be, from the back, the empty pin slot, the red wire and then finally the black wire.  Finally the white wire goes beside the empty pin slot in the connector, on the rear left pin of the main board Com2 connector.  That should be enough to get the R-Net talking if the power connection is installed properly on the R-Net interface board.

prophead

p { margin-bottom: 0.08in; }  This procedure should provide you with a working backup disk for the SMS3


Required tools:
   A Linux system running just about any distribution, I suggest Ubuntu.
   A Hard disk of similar type and size (perhaps a bit larger) than your SMS3 disk.
   A USB to IDE parallel adapter to connect your existing SMS3 disk to the Linux system.  Two of these could be needed if you are unable to install the blank Hard disk in the Linux system.


Having the Linux system up and running and the empty blank Disk connected you need to identify the device node of the blank disk positively.  That is important because if you get it wrong all will be lost, either the root drive or the Linux system could be overwritten or the good working SMS3 disk could be wiped out.  So this is very important.  It may be a good idea to first install the empty blank disk and using Linux administrative tools format it to just anything that would mount.  This would guarantee that the disk is the one you are going to target to receive the backup image.


At this point you can see the new blank disk and you can use something like the disk free  command to identify its device node.


Next you remove the SMS3's working hard disk and attach it to the Linux computer using the USB to IDE adapter.  You can identify the device node using the  of this disk. Most likely the disk will mounts (there are three partitions).



Be sure to unmount the new empty diskl.


Now that you have the base device of the SMS3 disk and the base device of empty disk.  You can use the  command to write an image of the SMS3 disk to the empty disk.


This will take some time and you need to be patient.  Once complete either disk should be suitable to put into the SMS3 and operate just as it was prior to the backup.  If you chose to use a larger disk than the one in the SMS3 is is possible to grow the music storage partition of the larger disk to take advantage of the extra space, but that is a discussion for a later time.


Example


    NOTE:  The disk free command (df) will give the device nodes of all of the partitions.


df
/dev/sdj1            1442145212 266592528 1102295884  20% /media/MyEmptyDisk
/dev/sdk2              5139140   1130204   3747880  24% /media/_
/dev/sdk5            151873632   8773108 135385712   7% /media/_media
/dev/sdk1               101089      9384     86486  10% /media/_boot


    NOTE: this shows that the empty disk is on the sdj device and the SMS3 disk is on the sdk node.  With this information we are ready to make a backup image of the SMS3 disk


backup command:
dd if=/dev/sdk of=/dev/sdj


NOTE: You can also place this image in a file on a larger linux partition but it is much more useful to have the backup disk at the ready to install in the SMS3.

wizzbizz

Rnet now working fantastic stuff, really appreciated all your info prophead, the christmas music is blaring throughout the house

prophead

You made a substantial investment when you installed the Russound SMS3 and you deserve the enjoyment it can deliver.  If you happen to come up with any other support information post it here.  It is a shame that this information is not more readily available.

beebl

Prophead, i was curious if you have a drive image you would be willing to share, my SMS3 died over the weekend from what appears to  be a hard drive failure.    The drive now clicks during bios post and  I'm getting an error when attempting to dd the drive.  Please send me a PM.