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On Monday 23 October 2006 15:58, Greg Wallace wrote:
Well, it's been a week now and no more video problems. Looks like pulling the video card, vacuuming out the slot, wiping down the connectors on the card, and putting it back in was all that was necessary to fix the problem. I guess a little dust somehow got in there and caused a bad connection. Hard to believe that's all it took to fix it.
Greg, when I worked for AT&T in their switch centers, where the switch was an entire floor of 11 ft equipment bays full of plugin boards, we had all manner of weird problems. Seems like there is a fungus, or was that a bacterium, that likes to live on the gold plating of the connectors and its byproducts formed an atoms-thick insulation on the contacts. Bell Labs developed a spray cleaner for the connectors. Just unplug the board, spray the connector, plug it back in and the ghost would disappear. I seem to remember that the spray was found to be carcinogenic so they came up with a different formula, something with Freon TF, probably not ozone friendly, so maybe they are using something different now. Point is, it ain't dust or corrosion getting into the slot on your m.b. I have used 91% alcohol and, in extreme cases, a soft pencil eraser to clean contacts. All with antistatic precautions, obviously. Simply moving the board in the slot should clean enough surface area to fix the connection, but the problem will return. Then there is the problem of crystalline metallic whisker growth that bridges (shorts out) connections, but that's another story. Fred