Linux friendly hardware guy?

[Jose A. Dias]

You have your work cut out for you.

I think it's a good thing to check at first the power supply. It's quite
possible that your power supply is now misbehaving and not supplying a
good enough voltage to maintain the memory within spec. As others have
pointed out, try a live CD and see what it can do and what it reports as
"errors." It's quite possible that you might be looking for a
replacement power supply/motherboard very soon.

Does your bios have some kind of "monitoring" screen? I can boot into my
bios and have it tell me what the +5V, -5V, +12V and -12V lines are at
continuously. If the voltages are more than 5% off spec then you have a
problem.

Is there another machine nearby that is still working? You can also do a
hardware transplant from the flaky machine to the good machine, one
component at a time, and that would eliminate any questions about the
memory/video/cards, etc.

If you know what you're doing you can poke into the live motherboard
with a voltmeter to see what the individual readings are, assuming your
bios can't help, but you *really* have to know what you're doing...

Personally I would look into a new case with a motherboard that supports
your memory and transplant everything over. But that would be a couple
hundred bucks. Do you know anybody with some spare equipment?

Good Luck.

-- 
Jose Antonio Dias
Jose.Dias-V3Qe//ktpHnR7s880joybQ at public.gmane.org
www.diaslan.net


-----Original Message-----
From: owner-tlug-lxSQFCZeNF4 at public.gmane.org [mailto:owner-tlug-lxSQFCZeNF4 at public.gmane.org] On Behalf Of Rob
Sutherland
Sent: July 31, 2005 1:53 PM
To: tlug-lxSQFCZeNF4 at public.gmane.org
Subject: [TLUG]: Re:Linux friendly hardware guy?

Jose A. Dias writes: 

> Don't forget to check the power supply. Any time Windoze works and a
> real OS does not then you have: 
> 
> 1) memory problems
> 2) power problems
> 3) bad karma (:-) 
> 
> If the disk checks out, check the memory first, over a couple of days
> and if it complains, then check the power supply, and if that is
> correctable, then run the memory again... 
> 
> The power supply could "take the memory down" (i.e. short parts of it)
> but you could be lucky and just have a sub-standard +5V. 
> 
> Do you use an inline UPS? Any lightning recently?

I don't have a UPS, alas. This all started after the power went out and
that 
has happened a couple of times - so you think replacing the power supply
is 
a good thing to try? 

Rob 

--
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--
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TLUG requests: Linux topics, No HTML, wrap text below 80 columns
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