On 20/10/14 19:15, Anton Aylward wrote: <snip>
Then there's capacitors. Even if you don't have ones from the Era of the Plague, then still do odd things, polarise, depolarise, crack, explode, leak or stop working for anonymous reasons.
And resistors ...
Unless your 'amis' has been overclocking, the CPU is probably OK. Ironic isn't it? But please don't try pulling and replacing the CPU. You'll probably do a lot of damage.
Alas, this was something I did early on because I wanted to see exactly what CPU was in there, and the heatsink/fan seemed a little loose (crap fixing). All the thermal paste had come off so I put some new stuff on, the same little sachets I've used on other machines, but it seemed a bit runny, perhaps been sitting too long. Just hoping it hasn't dripped.
My experience with "decommissioned" and "recommissioned" equipment is that they can be "a learning experience". I've had a wonderful time with old, slow, underpowered , memory starved desktops (that never overheat), and with old, slow, low capacity disk drives (that seem to live forever). I've had PSUs die, PSUs blow up, motherboards fry and burn. But I've also had my share of systems that simply don't work in various ways for reasons that don't seem to be easily explained. Its the marginal, the intermittent ones that are frustrating.
Visual inspection of the mobo _might_ show something up, breaks, burns, loose components, solder joints discoloured. I believe there is a tool that lets your cell phone act like one of those IR spotters. It may take hardware hacking and might damage your phone. http://www.instructables.com/id/Poor-Mans-Cell-Phone-IR-Filter/?ALLSTEPS
My phone is an old feature(less) phone so no joy there. I have a much older P3 machine that I wanted to transplant a couple of items over from (soundcard, HD) but the rest is of a different generation so not interchangeable. It's possible I'm going to have to go back to using that 14-year-old machine instead :/
Suggestions for mobo problems include using a hair dryer to heat specific parts, or a can of spray coolant to do the opposite.
I have neither such thing at hand, but I do have a grill and some ice cubes. And a pair of feet. Never underestimate the power of a good kick when it comes to misbehaving electrical appliances. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org