Cisco Port Adapters

January 4, 2001

Products Affected

Problem Description

Channel Port Adapters (CPAs) in Cisco 7200 Series routers using SanDisk storage media fail to load default microcode from the SanDisk. This problem causes the CPAs to remain disabled after an initial system bootup or after an Cisco IOS ® Software reload.

Background

Unless otherwise configured, the Cisco IOS device driver attempts to load a Cisco 7200 Series CPA with microcode from personal computer memory card international association (PCMCIA) slot 0. When a PCMCIA Flash storage device is present, the CPA loads microcode normally; however, when SanDisk media is present, Cisco IOS addresses the PCMCIA device as "disk0" instead of as "slot0." Since the current Cisco IOS CPA device driver only looks for "slot0" media, the microcode load fails, and any CPA cards are left disabled and powered down.

Note: Default port adapter microcode is bundled in Cisco IOS images.

This problem affects the ESCON CPAs (ECPAs) and the Parallel CPAs (PCPAs).

Problem Symptoms

In systems with this problem, all affected CPAs are left disabled, and the following console messages may appear after a Cisco IOS bootup or reload:

%XCPA-3-DWNLDFAIL: bay [1] download failed filename not configured or doesn't exist:  
slot0:xcpa27-4_kernel_xcpa
%XCPA-3-NOTLOADED: bay [1] port adapter download and reset failed
%XCPA-3-DEACTIVATED: bay [1] deactivated
%PA-3-DEACTIVATED: port adapter in bay [1] powered off
%XCPA-3-POWEREDOFF: bay [1] powered off

Workaround/Solution

Currently there is no Cisco IOS software fix available for this problem. Until a fix is available, you can work around this problem by using CPA microcode load commands in the Cisco IOS configuration.

For an ECPA:

microcode ecpa disk0:xcpa27-4
microcode reload

For a PCPA:

microcode pcpa disk0:xcpa27-4
microcode reload

This field notice will be revised with Cisco IOS upgrade information once a software fix is available.

DDTS

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For More Information

If you require further assistance, or if you have any further questions regarding this field notice, please contact the Cisco Systems Technical Assistance Center (TAC) by one of the following methods:

• Open a service request on Cisco.com
• By email
• By telephone

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