5:19 PM, Sep 30, 2004 
Computers That Die
I ordered a new motherboard for my linux machine this week, a Shuttle of some kind, and it arrived today. As I commenced surgery on the old machine, taking it apart to put the new motherboard in, I saw the reason for the trouble I'd been having. To bring you up to speed, Vesuvius, as this machine is called, has had heat issues for as long as I've had it, and has had to have its cover off all the time, to avoid the heat alarm going off. Most recently, it's been dying inexplicably, and with no warning or sign of what happened.
This got to the point that If I would turn this machine on, it would start making randomly paced, pitched, and long beeps, as if a game of pac-man was running merrily inside the case. Not one to press the issue, I turned it off, and guessed that the motherboard had had it. It indeed had, as I found out today, when I tried to detach the power supply cable from the motherboard.
Definitely a very dead machine. My only guess is that somehow, long ago, the burnt piece, which wasn't burnt at the time, pressed its copper wires into the plastic of the plastic housing of the power supply plug, slowly melting through it over a period of two years, to the point that the coppser wires came into contact with the metal rods that provide electricity to the motherboard, causing a neat little devastating electrical circuit.
Anyway, it's dead, and now I need to go and buy a new power supply.
2 comments
Rachel replied:
It took me a minute to figure which part had actually been burnt.
It took me a minute to figure which part had actually been burnt.
9:48 AM, Oct 1, 2004
Sad_Panda commented:
Sigh, My linux hd shot craps during a storm power blink apparently, thus making me a Sad Panda.
Sigh, My linux hd shot craps during a storm power blink apparently, thus making me a Sad Panda.
6:46 AM, Oct 12, 2004
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