ReadyNAS slow blinking blue light, can’t connect

We have an old (from 2005!) ReadyNAS1000
I wanted to be able to ssh to it, so I tried installing the SSH add-on. At first I chose the wrong version, then I found I need the ‘sparc’ version. It installed and told me to reboot. After that, the unit appeared temporarily in RAIDar with a solid blue dot and the message File System Check, 100%.

After about 5 minutes, it disappeared from RAIDar and couldn’t connect. The blue led is blinking slowly and the volume light is green.

I tried rebooting into “skip volume check” mode, but that produced the same result.

Based on some forum suggestions, I tried removing one drive (with the power off) and then it booted up OK, I am able to connect in RAIDar and I put the drive back in, it’s rebuilding now.

UPDATE: AFter the rebuild things seemed great, everything was working. So I tried rebooting and ended up with the same result: Slowly blinking blue light and no NAS available on RAIDar. Factory reset time??

UPDATE2: Success! Not sure if it even did anything, but I held in the reset button with a pen until all the green leds flashed once. That apparently reset the password (to admin netgear1) and after that it told me it detected an unclean shutdown and to do a reboot and volume check – after that it took about 10 or 15 minutes and came up green on RAIDar, hooray.