(no subject)

[nmg]

The fan on our main PC has been misbehaving for the past couple of months (buzzing intermittently), which is a fairly good indication that the bearing has been going. The bearing seized completely within the past few days, but I'm not exactly sure when it happened.

So, time to replace things. The last time this happened (over a decade ago, on my machine of that time), I replaced the fan, which seemed to do the trick. This time around it looked a little more tricky; I'd have to unsolder the old fan from a very crowded circuitboard in the PSU. Discretion being the better part of valour, I decided that the easiest option would be to just buy a new power supply, and get one that was a bit quieter than that on the old machine.

So, hippety-hop to Maplins, and back again with a new PSU. Removed the old one and fitted the new one, being careful to ground myself before doing so. New PSU is indeed quiet, and pulls air through in a way that the old PSU no longer did...and the machine as a whole is dead. Doesn't boot, doesn't even get as far as the BIOS prompt. Looks very much as though, despite my precautions, I've just killed it.

And this is why I'm a computer scientist, and not a computer engineer.

Comments

I hate technology*.

[lionsphil.livejournal.com]

Here's a fun one for you. A box dual-boots Windows XP and GNOME/Linux.

• Boot it into Windows. Receive random bluescreens, often with a bias towards I/O.
• Boot it into Linux. Be told that / is corrupt. fsck it, and watch the kernel "oops" itself.
Let it warm up, and everything is fine for both, and all apparent I/O problems have vanished.

If you diagnose this as "bad memory when booted cold", congratulations. I'd love it to be that, but memtest86+ tells me that it really, really isn't. Voltages, temperatures, etc. are fine, too. I guess it's something more irritating, like a motherboard fault that has appeared out of nowhere.

Don't even get me started on the high-end graphics card that fell into mediocrity in the time it took me to get it working (over six months). Bloody PC hardware.

* Exceptions are made for robots. Also, Bromptons, and cars not made by Americans or the French.

Re: I hate technology*.

[nmg.livejournal.com]

Yes, when it comes to that irritating combination of complexity and unreliability, motherboards come top of the list (followed closely by graphics cards).

More irritatingly, the march of new processors means that motherboards get deprecated very quickly. Want to replace a motherboard in a four year old machine? You might as well replace the processor as well while you're at it. And the memory.