[GRLUG] dead computer

[John-Thomas Richards]

On Tue, Dec 17, 2013 at 10:16:09AM -0500, Patrick Goupell wrote:
> 
> On 12/16/2013 08:19 PM, Cprossu wrote:
> >I see all the hard stuff has been discussed. Make sure your cmos
> >battery has the correct charge/isn't shorted, I've had ECS boards
> >refuse to post due to that before (it will be a CR2032 lithium
> >button battery on your motherboard between the pcie and pci
> >slots). If it still doesn't boot with a battery swap, try the
> >clear cmos jumper. Like others here I'd check the few electrolytic
> >caps on the motherboard (Actually scratch that, report back of the
> >solid caps that are installed on that board are 'through-hole' or
> >not, I wonder if these are the badly made 'lytics from a while ago
> >that were made to 'look like' solid caps), then swap out the ram,
> >then try another power supply. I'd try a video card too for the
> >heck of it, even if it's an older PCI one. The good news is that
> >if it is your motherboard, you can pick up something fairly cheap
> >(like $55) off of newegg or something (I'd recommend like a Asus
> >M6A78L-M Plus), and if it ends up being your ram, 4gb of kingston
> >ddr3 1333 is currently going for around $30. Either way cheap fix.
> >
> 
> Was in the computer this morning.
> 
> Unplugged everything and inspected the motherboard.  Did not see
> anything that looked like bad / leaking capacitors (or anything
> else).
> 
> Plugged everything back together and hit the power button.
> 
> It came on with the following bios message:
> 
> DQS training failed on previous boot.   Reverted to slower dram speed.
> 
> So I don't know what the problem was.  Will hope that it doesn't come back.

A quick search on that error message suggests incorrectly overclocked
RAM, bad RAM, or a bad CMOS battery.
-- 
john-thomas
------
In a perfect union the man and woman are like a strung bow. Who is to
say whether the string bends the bow, or the bow tightens the string?
Cyril Connolly, critic and editor (1903-1974)