Oh Bugger!
Oct. 11th, 2007 03:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bellinghmanThings I really didn't need, #1
I came into work this morning, turned on the monitor, and tapped the NumLock key on the keypad (my favourite way of rousing a PC from its slumbers - I have the screen power down after 15 minutes - NumLock is a corner key and so easy to hit, won't send unexpected input to any program, provides immediate feedback, and is less obnoxious than CapsLock).
The NumLock indicator on the keyboard didn't toggle. The 3 finger salute did nothing. The reset button didn't work. Hmmm ... interesting. The power button was not working either.
Side off, check the board. OK, one pathetic little LED glowing green, but no fans running anywhere (well, that's a pair of CPU fans, a South Bridge fan, and the PSU fans. No GPU fan, because the graphics card is a 1997 vintage ATI Rage 3D Pro).
Power off, back on. Fans run for half a second, and then give up.
PSU, probably, then. Able to provide voltage, but no current by the look of it.
Switch in a different PSU. Nope, exactly the same symptoms. Oops, not good.
Start examining the mobo a little closer. Oh, dear, some big caps have blown. Bugger, that's a motherboard needing replacement. But wait, it's an MSI K7D Master. It's the only one in the company. The last time one of these got replaced, it was the last one that the suppliers had in stock, and that was a couple of years ago. But I really don't want to replace a motherboard under an existing installation of Windows 2000 - it gets sort of upset at that sort of thing.
Only one thing for it.
I know of one, count it, one working K7D Master. It's in my old home machine, the one that's been mostly a storage heater for the last several months.
So I'm typing this on a Frankenstein's monster - it's my home PC, case and graphics card, my work network card, raid card and drives. Total time lost - 4 hours 30.
The silly thing is, this machine was due to be replaced tomorrow. Its replacement (a scary looking Dell workstation jobbie with an internal wind tunnel cooling setup) has been sitting in the tech support guy's office for a month.
In the meantime, I've now got full 32-bit colour at 1920x1200, thanks to the changed graphics card, and the processors run at 1600 MHz rather than the 1200 MHz of the dead machine, so in some respects, it's an improvement.
I came into work this morning, turned on the monitor, and tapped the NumLock key on the keypad (my favourite way of rousing a PC from its slumbers - I have the screen power down after 15 minutes - NumLock is a corner key and so easy to hit, won't send unexpected input to any program, provides immediate feedback, and is less obnoxious than CapsLock).
The NumLock indicator on the keyboard didn't toggle. The 3 finger salute did nothing. The reset button didn't work. Hmmm ... interesting. The power button was not working either.
Side off, check the board. OK, one pathetic little LED glowing green, but no fans running anywhere (well, that's a pair of CPU fans, a South Bridge fan, and the PSU fans. No GPU fan, because the graphics card is a 1997 vintage ATI Rage 3D Pro).
Power off, back on. Fans run for half a second, and then give up.
PSU, probably, then. Able to provide voltage, but no current by the look of it.
Switch in a different PSU. Nope, exactly the same symptoms. Oops, not good.
Start examining the mobo a little closer. Oh, dear, some big caps have blown. Bugger, that's a motherboard needing replacement. But wait, it's an MSI K7D Master. It's the only one in the company. The last time one of these got replaced, it was the last one that the suppliers had in stock, and that was a couple of years ago. But I really don't want to replace a motherboard under an existing installation of Windows 2000 - it gets sort of upset at that sort of thing.
Only one thing for it.
I know of one, count it, one working K7D Master. It's in my old home machine, the one that's been mostly a storage heater for the last several months.
So I'm typing this on a Frankenstein's monster - it's my home PC, case and graphics card, my work network card, raid card and drives. Total time lost - 4 hours 30.
The silly thing is, this machine was due to be replaced tomorrow. Its replacement (a scary looking Dell workstation jobbie with an internal wind tunnel cooling setup) has been sitting in the tech support guy's office for a month.
In the meantime, I've now got full 32-bit colour at 1920x1200, thanks to the changed graphics card, and the processors run at 1600 MHz rather than the 1200 MHz of the dead machine, so in some respects, it's an improvement.
