[GRLUG] NOT LINUX - dead PC

[Bob Kline]

On Sun, Sep 19, 2010 at 10:15 PM, Michael Mol <mikemol at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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.
>

Good points.  As winter sets in we can
look look forward to sparks from sweaters,
carpet, etc., to add to these hazards.  It's
easy to forget how quickly static can take
out a component today.

Just by luck, I'd back up the hard drive
the day before.  Perhaps the only bright
spot in this saga.  So I have a backup
system going now, and but for a few
hours of changes to things, have not
lost anything, and maybe nothing if I
do find the hard drive in the affected
system is OK.

All perhaps another reason to run a UPS....  :-(

   -- Bob

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