Hi Gran,
 
>I am sure this 5K does not have the V2.0 upgrade.  There  is one other piece 
of information of interest.  In the last two outages  other commercial 
equipment also had programming problems.  I have to wonder  if the 5K is 
susceptible 
to low voltage.  The dropping of a single phase in  the transmission line 
often will give a low voltage like 80V instead of  120V.  The Astron does not 
have a low voltage cut out so I could see the  output voltage dropping from 
13.5 
to say 6 to 8 volts under load.  Could  this cause a corruption of memory in 
spite of the lithium battery?
 
It shouldn't happen. The 5K, 6K, and 7K have similar reset and  memory 
protection systems, which work like this: As the +5V  supply drops, the 
processor is 
forced into reset first, followed  a short time later by the RAM being 
disabled. The coin cell is  switched in to replace the +5V supply as the RAM's 
power 
source.  The current drawn from the cell is very low because the RAM is no 
longer  being written or read.
 
When power returns, the reverse occurs. As the voltage climbs, the RAM's  
power supply is switched from the coin cell to the +5V supply and the RAM  is 
enabled. The processor's reset line is then released and the  processor begins 
executing its program.
 
If you try to run the controller under "brownout"  conditions, +10V regulator 
will lose regulation and output a  voltage that is lower than its input. If 
the +10V regulator can't  supply the +5V regulator with enough voltage, and the 
+5V  output drops by >5%, the protection system kicks in.
 
As extra protection, if the processor ever jumps the track and fails  to 
execute the program correctly, a watchdog circuit will notice this  and reset 
the 
processor. That restarts the program.
 
Since the 5K is quite old it's possible the RAM, the DS1232  (reset), or the 
DS1210 (battery manager) is bad. I suppose it's even  possible that the INIT 
pushbutton is corroded closed so that every reset is  a cold start, but you'd 
know this by listening to the reset message (an appended  CW "C" = Cold Start). 
 Or, the battery jumper is out, or the cell was  installed reversed, or ?..
 
73,
Bob




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