SOLVED Trouble-shooting my FreeNAS Mini issues

[Ir13h]

I have a 2 year old FreeNAS Mini that recently stopped working. The symptoms where basically the FreeNAS not connecting to the network so there was no way to get to the FreeNAS ui and then when I connect a monitor and keyboard I don't seem to be able to get to the bios, screen just stays blank and nothing ever seems to happen.

There are probably a lot of possible causes but today is my day to look into it. the case has been opened for a while and the interior is very dusty so going to clean that up and reseat everything see if that makes any difference HOWEVER I notice the cable in the attached picture is not connected to anything. I am pretty sure this was not always the case but I cannot see any place that looks like its natural home. Can anyone point me in the right direction to figuring out what is up with this dangling cable?

Secondly assuming cleaning and finding the home for this cable does nothing, what are some good ways to troubleshoot the hardware? should I assume its the motherboard if I can't get to the bios? the IPMI interface does connect to the network and I can get to that ui in the browser so I feel like the motherboard is working somewhat but I don't really have any experience with this kind of troubleshooting

 

[Ir13h]

actually there are 4 blue slots that are just out of site in the 'othercableslikeit' image that the dangling cable seems to fit into, maybe they go into a couple of those?

 

[Ericloewe]

It's probably a known issue. Contact iX and arrange for them to ship you a new motherboard.

https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/freenas-mini-motherboard-clock-signal-issue.50582/

HOWEVER I notice the cable in the attached picture is not connected to anything. I am pretty sure this was not always the case but I cannot see any place that looks like its natural home. Can anyone point me in the right direction to figuring out what is up with this dangling cable?

Those are two spare SATA cables for future installation of SSDs.

 

[Ir13h]

wow thank-you I called and they are sending a shipping label to send the whole rig back and they will replace the mobo for me at no cost, great service glad I asked here. thanks again.

 

[Ericloewe]

That was fast. Cool.

 

[wblock]

Those two unconnected SATA cables are for optional L2ARC or SLOG SSDs.

 

[Chris Moore]

You might want to mark this as solved.