[clug] Any ideas on what to look for to get an old PC running?

jhock jhock at iinet.net.au
Mon Dec 22 10:45:19 GMT 2008


Wow!

Thanks for all the tips.  It looks like I have a very fun few days
before Christmas.  Now if only my five year old son will let me have
some quite time to do it all.  ;o)

I'll let you know how I go but it may take some time.  

Thanks for all the suggestions.


John

On Mon, 2008-12-22 at 21:18 +1100, David Schoen wrote:
> The other thing I thought I'd mention is that I've seen PSUs go in to
> a fail safe mode sometimes. E.g. you might get down to MB, PSU and CPU
> and it doesn't turn on but then you swap in a new PSU and all seems
> ok, so you go "ok dead PSU", but then you rebuild the whole thing and
> the PSU is dead again.
> 
> I've only had this a couple of times, once the 12V pin on a HDD had
> shorted straight to ground, another time a positive wire had rubbed
> off it's shielding and shorted on the case and the other one I can
> remember was when a warranty acer service tech replaced a PSU in a
> machine for me and he still had it set to 110V. I'm happy to report
> that the PSUs all "came back to life" after about 30 minutes of
> sitting around unplugged. It's actually truly amazing what they design
> these things to deal with these days :)
> 
> Just thought I would add this so that you don't just throw them out
> and give up if this happens.
> 
> - Dave.
> 
> 2008/12/22 Mike Carden <mike.carden at gmail.com>:
> >> You should now just have a MB, PSU and CPU. If you press the on switch
> >> and the fans still don't go you've usually got a dead PSU
> >
> > As an aside, I'll note that I very much prefer trying to fix a
> > 'completely dead' machine to attempting to fix an intermittent fault.
> > So much easier to know when you've nailed it. Your problem should be
> > easy to fix.
> >
> > And I'll side with those for whom the dangers of electrickery hold no
> > mystery. Opening up a PSU is no big deal for a sensible person. Sure,
> > you may kill yourself if you try hard, but you can do that crossing
> > the street. What I will suggest is that it is very rarely worth your
> > while to go that far. On a desert island with just one CPU? Sure, get
> > inside and fix it. Here and now? Grab an available spare and try it.
> >
> > --
> > MC
> > --
> > linux mailing list
> > linux at lists.samba.org
> > https://lists.samba.org/mailman/listinfo/linux
> >



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