[GRLUG] NOT LINUX - dead PC

[Michael Mol]

On Sun, Sep 19, 2010 at 7:12 PM, L. V. Lammert <lvl at omnitec.net> wrote:
> On Sun, 19 Sep 2010, Bob Kline wrote:
>
>> Yes, there is a green light on the
>> back of the PS that is on.  And yes,
>> I did check the power strip.  Many
>> other things are plugged in to it,
>> and are live, and I even moved to
>> a different plug.
>>
> If there is a green light on the back of the PC, it has power; either the
> PS itself has failed, or there is a possibility that your power button has
> a problem.
>
> The power switch is actually a pushbutton, and are quite cheap on some
> cases. It could be a conicidence that it has failed now that you need it?

It sounds like a power surge is what took down the system, so
normally-off SPST pushbutton switch is highly unlikely to be affected.
(Although I suppose it's possible that Bob bumped the wire loose while
looking inside the box.)

If the power surge is what took it out, I really wouldn't trust any of
the components in the system. At best, I might try throwing the hard
drive in an external enclosure to recover the data. I wouldn't want a
fault in any of the rest to potentially cause damage when attached to
other components. Electrical failures in circuit boards are finicky
things. You don't know if, for example, a piece of the code that
controls the onboard voltage regulators (yay, full software control
for overclockers!) might have gotten borked, or if some other
component will interfere with spec operation.

-- 
:wq

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