So I ended up making a special trip because it was bothering the crap out of me. I brought a different usb drive with me to test. The replacement usb drive had the exact same problem. I plugged both drives into my laptop and both worked fine. Finally, I reformatted the drives from my laptop and then reconnected to the server and everything worked perfectly. I shutdown the server a couple times and did a couple cold boots just to make sure everything stuck and all was well. The original formatting of the drives were all NTFS so I am not sure what difference reformatting them from my laptop made but seemed to do the trick.

I appreciate all the feedback from everyone.

Thanks again!!

Just disabled the usb ports through iDRAC and everything booted up fine. Guess it is either the drive or some bug that Dell needs to release a patch for.

@travisdh1 said in Dell R730 - Stuck at Initializing Firmware Interfaces:

@syko24 You probably need to use a different USB drive. It's possible that the drive is bad, it is also possible that the port isn't supplying enough power for a spinning drive. What ever the issue actually is, just replace the drive.

That is definitely something I will try. I have also noticed that I have two arrays setup. The second one is severely delayed in becoming available after the system does finally boot.

Here is one of many posts I have seen online with similar issues. I have tried unticking the collect inventory option. Again I won’t be onsite until Friday so I can’t test different drives yet.

https://www.google.com/amp/mikeconjoice.com/2017/03/22/dell-12g-server-stuck-at-dell-servers-stuck-at-initializing-firmware-interfaces/amp/

Has anyone else run into this issue? I have an external usb drive connected to an R730 and it takes about 45 minutes before it will advance from the Initializing firmware interfaces screen. From what I have seen from other posts online there appears to be a similar issue with some Dell models and having a usb drive connected. I have never run into this in the past with other R720 or R730 systems.

All Bios and firmware updates have been applied. Is it possible I just have a bad usb drive connected? Once the system does boot and I try to diskpart it is extremely slow. When I try to create a partition on the usb drive it ends up telling me the disk is not ready. I am not sure if this is because it is a bad usb drive or because of the initial issue at boot.

I am not going to be onsite for a couple days but was wondering if anyone else has seen this before.

Thanks in advance.

@NashBrydges Another option might be to setup google cloud print.

@NashBrydges You can remote print using the ClickOnce feature built into MC. RDP needs to be enabled on the guest system. Before the RDP session connects just check the box for printers under local resources.

Youtube Video

I think the option we may go with is ehopper.com as it can be used in your browser, android, or ipad.

I was also looking at aronium.com which is a free Windows POS software. It has a lot of potential but no merchant services options yet.

@JaredBusch - I came across Rezku too. It looks like a good product but no pricing on their site.

@JaredBusch said in POS recommendation for a small bar:

@syko24 said in POS recommendation for a small bar:

Run on Windows or possibly just browser based - not looking for iPad or Android App (screens are too small)

This is a horrible requirement. I've never seen staff have problem with a tablet based system due to the form factor.

How could it be too small? And if that is truly a problem, I have seen systems with oversized tablets. Used one to day as a customer when I took my wife's car to the carwash.

I have a client looking to move from some old shitty Windows based POS to something tablet based in fact.
https://www.republicofit.com/topic/19543/anyone-heard-of-rezku-pos

I agree that there are larger sized Android tablets that could work. I have also looked at some of the Android emulators like BlueStacks.com . The reason I had said Windows was a requirement was because the two owners (both in their 70s) are familiar with Windows. Plus they want to use hardware they already own. It's called shit we got .

@SmithErick said in POS recommendation for a small bar:

Meets some of the requirements, I am a huge fan of toast, but obviously might be overkill for this situation. I have been to a local bar with only one register, and they used it. https://pos.toasttab.com/

Yeah I've looked at Toast as well as a bunch of similar POS products (Lavu, Loyverse, Cake). My problem with some of those products are you have to purchase their hardware and/or use them as the credit card processor. Kind of feel like it's all vendor lock in at that point.