On 20/10/14 18:57, Felix Miata wrote:

965 might be a little new for the following, but you never know, especially WRT power supplies, and compact form factor cases that run the internals hot: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor_plague

It's funny, I only read up on that for the first time a short while ago, before attempting to use this donated system. As far as I could see, there weren't any obviously blown capacitors on the mainboard and the timescales mentioned didn't quite seem to match this system's generation. It's in a standard midi tower case. A very bog standard home PC by all accounts. I've known all sorts of failed components over the years on my systems, but this intrigues me because normally it results in a system that doesn't switch on at all, a blank screen, or dodgy goings on once booted, whereas this comes on and goes off again shortly after. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

Peter composed on 2014-10-20 19:16 (UTC+0200):

...As far as I could see, there weren't any obviously blown capacitors on the mainboard and the timescales mentioned didn't quite seem to match this system's generation.

Its timescale's genesis is in motherboards. OTOH, PS development, production and QC are rather different from motherboards. It's apparently easier to get a PS to survive its warranty period with lower quality components, and in the process kill a motherboard that might have survived a better PS.

It's in a standard midi tower case. A very bog standard home PC by all accounts.

So not a common brand, generic in the true sense of the word? How much does its PS weigh? Light tends to have a high correlation to cheap in a PS. Open up that PS if you didn't already, and check the brands if there are no caps obviously bad. http://www.badcaps.net/forum/showthread.php?t=388 Changing bad ones successfully in a PS tends to be easier than those on a motherboard.

I've known all sorts of failed components over the years on my systems, but this intrigues me because normally it results in a system that doesn't switch on at all, a blank screen, or dodgy goings on once booted, whereas this comes on and goes off again shortly after.

Instant or not long after shutdown isn't particularly uncommon in my experience. -- "The wise are known for their understanding, and pleasant words are persuasive." Proverbs 16:21 (New Living Translation) Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 ** a11y rocks! Felix Miata *** http://fm.no-ip.com/ -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

Hello, On Mon, 20 Oct 2014, Anton Aylward wrote:

On 10/20/2014 02:37 PM, Felix Miata wrote:

...

...

...

...As far as I could see, there weren't any obviously blown capacitors on the mainboard and the timescales mentioned didn't quite seem to match this system's generation. Its timescale's genesis is in motherboards. OTOH, PS development, production and QC are rather different from motherboards. It's apparently easier to get a PS to survive its warranty period with lower quality components, and in the process kill a motherboard that might have survived a better PS.

I've seen cases where a PS did not protect against a power surge. You would think that a switched-mode PSU would, but apparently not. Cheap components, poor layout.. Whatever.

ZAP!

That being said, what Peter describes _could_ be a wonky PS, and something that starts but gives up once a load actually hits it. its something I would consider. One of the advantages of the Closet is that there's always something there to cannibalise for some component.

Could be the spike from the HD drive(s) spinning up. Had something similar, on coldboot the system began to start (Fans spinning up, maybe the BIOS page showing?), then just hang. It turned out that the PSU (450W with not much on 12V) was not strong enough (anymore) to power up the drives (8-13, can't remember which box it was at what point). Solution: a solid (rather costly) 650W SeaSonic PSU (from Corsair). In a different case, the board would not boot rightaway, producing "nuiiiic-nuiiiic-nuiiiic - tick tick tick" sounds directly after switching on power (along with the fans spinning, IIRC). And it got worse. While at first it did start and run after a couple of tries (nuiiiic .. tick cycles), at the end, I think it took minutes of that before it came up. Oh, and it tended to shut down after a while (~5mins?) later. Turned out the MoBo was borked. Switched that (on guarantee IIRC :), everything fine since then. So much for symptoms re PSU vs. MoBo ;) For the Op: I put 60% on the MoBo and 40% on the PSU ... That is if the system stays on long enough for the HDDs (the spinning rust type) to have spun up. If it shuts down while the HDDs spin up it's 70+% on the PSU ... -dnh [1] http://www.tomshardware.de/netzteil-oem-hersteller,testberichte-240604-4.htm... -- Vala: Thank you. I apologize for ever doubting [Mitchells] masterful skills at negotiation. Daniel: He's doing the best he can. Vala: That's what terrifies me. -- Stargate SG-1, 9x05 - The Powers That Be -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

On 21/10/14 18:49, Anton Aylward wrote:

On 10/21/2014 12:02 AM, David Haller wrote:

...

For the Op: I put 60% on the MoBo and 40% on the PSU ... That is if the system stays on long enough for the HDDs (the spinning rust type) to have spun up. If it shuts down while the HDDs spin up it's 70+% on the PSU ...

Simple test for that:

Disconnect the disks. If the disks are draining the PSU then the mobo works, bios comes up complaining that the disks have vanished.

If the problem persists, ...

Thanks everyone for the input thus far. I've been distracted these last couple of days and might not get to look into this for a few more days yet. I certainly hope it's the PSU and not the mobo; much easier (and cheaper) to fix. I haven't had a good look at it but I'm sure it's just a cheapo model that came in the case. So far as I can tell, it's not a branded PC but a home build, which surprises me since I wouldn't have credited the coward that palmed it off on me as being computer savvy enough. I did already try unplugging a couple of drives but this didn't change anything. I'll try disconnecting all but the essentials next time. Cheers, Peter -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

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

On 10/20/2014 02:17 PM, John Andersen wrote:

My experience is that the former is in most cases associated with infant mortality and the latter is associated with the year immediately after the warranty ran out.

Sadly it didn't used to be like that but engineers are getting better at making 'lifetime' one of the design specifications. As has been mentioned before, I have old old 20G and 30G drives that will not die. Compare this to the 500G and 750G I've had that outlast warranty by a few months or a year at the outside. I expect my 1T and 2T drives to die the day after warranty. OK, that's not fair. About 1/3rd of my 1T drives died within a few days. In ancient times in places where energy such as coal was expensive the bathing tradition was to have a bucket of (cold) water poured over you, soap up and scrub, then rinse off (in cold water). Afterwards there was the equivalent of the hot tub, but you had to be scrubbed clean first. I wonder if there is an equivalent of the "cold scrub" or the "shower" before getting into the tub for hardware. "Acceptance Testing"? -- Dictators ride to and fro upon tigers which they dare not dismount. And the tigers are getting hungry. - Winston Churchill -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

On 10/20/2014 04:57 PM, Felix Miata wrote:

Anton Aylward composed on 2014-10-20 16:24 (UTC-0400):

...

engineers are getting better at making 'lifetime' one of the design specifications.

Reputation doesn't seem to matter as much as it used to. Companies absorb each other, and names disappear. Even big companies are wont to change names "to get with the times", create a "new" image, or whatever. Remember Goldstar electronic products from 20 or so years ago? Wachovia Bank from 7 years ago? Master Charge? BankAmericCard? Cities Service? Pure Oil? St Petersburg Times? TWA? Borland? WordPerfect? Lotus?

Try a few names out of Canada or the UK :-0 Also, you might care to read "In search of Stupidity" http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/Stupidity.html Rick's site is at http://www.insearchofstupidity.com/ and the front page makes for interesting reading. Visit the museum of stupidity. He mentions Micropro. Read "Once upon a time in Computerland". Many of us here lived though the era Rick describes, the 1980s and 90s when Microsoft was just another player. If that grabs your interest you can read it online at http://os24.org/files/a-z/dynamics/Merrill_R_Chapman-In_Search_of_Stupidity-... -- The future is taking shape now in our own beliefs and in the courage of our leaders. Ideas and leadership -- not natural or social 'forces' -- are the prime movers in human affairs. - George Roche, A World Without Heroes -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

On Monday, October 20, 2014 05:09:33 PM John Andersen wrote:

On 10/20/2014 1:24 PM, Anton Aylward wrote:

...

Sadly it didn't used to be like that but engineers are getting better at making 'lifetime' one of the design specifications.

It was pointed out to me once that Engineering is the art of finding the least safe design. (It was in reference to building bridges and such.

By that it was meant the design that would use the least materials, cost the least to build, But... Which was still safe.

If anything, the definition of safe now seems to equate to the length of the warranty.

There is some evidence the bad capacitor era was caused by industrial espionage http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor_plague#Industrial_espionage_imp licated

The company I was with at the time was manufacturing computers in that time frame, and we got hit badly by these exploding caps.

Joe user could, with a soldering iron and a couple hours, replace them all, for a few dollars in parts, but it never paid on an industrial scale, and a lot of mother boards got sent back upstream.

I remember the bad capacitor days. Back then I worked for a company providing industrial instrumentation. We had so many go bad that we just replaced and boards and sent them back to the home office for repair. Thank was during the time we were guaranteeing 99.9% up time. Now that was fun! -- openSUSE 13.1(Linux 3.11.10-21-desktop x86_64| Intel(R) Quad Core(TM) i5-4440 CPU @ 3.10GHz|8GB DDR3| GeForce 8400GS (NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-340.46)|KDE 4.14.2 -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

On Mon, Oct 20, 2014 at 4:47 PM, Cristian Rodríguez wrote:

El 20/10/14 a las #4, Anton Aylward escribió:

...

But sometimes equipment *IS* broken. I've had PSUs die, PSUs blow up, motherboards fry and burn.

I had a minor electrical fire once .. lab had to be evacuated due the smoke..does that count as fun ? :-D Horrendously crappy electronics.

Fun is when you have a small "data center" maybe 4 meters by 4 meters, with a 240volt circuit breaker on the rear wall, that floods to about an inch deep. I was very happy I didn't have to walk through the water and throw the circuit breaker. That was around 1983 and the computers needed 240 volts. Greg -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

On 10/20/2014 04:22 PM, Anton Aylward wrote:

Actually I went though a phase where much of the electronics I used "blew up". By blow up I do mean exothermic to the point of destruction, often accompanied by rapid expansion of material and sometimes smoke.

Somewhere along the line I grew out of it.

I used to have a .2 Farad electrolytic capacitor that I always wanted to charge up to its 35-vdc working capacity and short out. I couldn't figure out how to do it safely (as if that mattered) and easily. It was as big as a quart milk bottle. Regards, Lew -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org