Richard Fillion [rick@rhix.ods.org] wrote:
> My computer crashed out of the blue last night, it was the first time
> ever that it crashed where i didnt know what caused the crash. When i
> rebooted it, "the smell" engulfed the room. You know, that horrid
> "burning circuits" smell. So i put it off, and opened the box. I
> looked all over for what had fried, took all the pci cards out, nothing
> smelt burnt. So i put it all back in, and put it back on, hoping that
> whatever broke would break some more so that i'd see what went wrong.
> But instead all went fine, and it booted into debian. So i shut it off,
> closed up the case, and put it back on. No more problems.
>
> I wake up this morning, move the mouse to wake up the box, nothing. Hit
> the keyboard, nothing, try pinging from roommate's computer, nothing.
> So i power it off, and power it on, all sounds well, but monitor doesnt
> turn on. So i open up the case, and look around. I touch the heatsink,
> its cold. It shouldnt be burning hot, but it shoiuldnt be COLD.
> Nothing smells burnt, it sounds right, the harddrives spin up, but i get
> no output. The heatsink doesnt even get warm. Just confirmed, power
> gets to the PS/2 ports, cause the optical mouse's light goes on. I dont
> have a null modem cable here to be able to telnet in, is there any more
> than what i've done thta i can do?
I recently had an alpha die in a similar manner. Turns out it has 6
lines in the power connector that supply some voltage (+12V maybe?)
simply because it draws so much current that it needs all 6 lines. Well
one of the wiggled a little loose, and the other 5 got so hot they
melted the connector and burned the motherboard. Wasn't too hard to fix
-- scrape off the carbon scoring and re-seat the connector.
Anyway, check your power connector. 0V to the processor will make it
cold. :)
Cheers,
Bob McElrath [Univ. of Wisconsin at Madison, Department of Physics]
We're sorry, your freedoms, generosity, and sense of community aid and abet
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