[Novalug] Dead Computer Diagnosis

[James Ewing Cottrell 3rd]

I had two eMachines die of heat exhaustion.

One other thing to do is add a fan to the back of the machine. Ten to 
twenty bucks well spent! If you have a desk with a space for your 
computer, leave the door open (or drill some ventilation holes in the 
door) while it's running.

Go pick a motherboard and CPU you like and swap them into the system.

JIM

David A. Hammond wrote:

>To the one who asked make and model, it is an eMachines
>T2865.  Out of warranty because I bought it used at PCRetro
>about a year and a half ago.
>
>Thanks again and I will be sure to let you know what the final
>outcome is.
>
>Dave
>
>
>---- Original message ----
>  
>
>>Date: Thu, 16 Nov 2006 08:46:39 -0500 (EST)
>>From: "David A. Hammond" <hammonds at starpower.net>  
>>Subject: [Novalug] Dead Computer Diagnosis  
>>To: novalug at calypso.tux.org
>>
>>Hi,
>>
>>I have a machine which is (nearly) dead and I need some help
>>getting started on diagnosing it.  There's not much to go on.
>>
>>When I hit the power switch, it lights up and both fans (power
>>supply and cpu) spin.  Nothing else happens.  The keyboard
>>lights don't flash, there's no beep, and no synch is sent to
>>the monitor.  As best I can tell there are no diagnostic leds
>>anywhere on the motherboard.
>>
>>What led up to this state is as follows:
>>
>>This machine is primarily used as a file server, name server,
>>DHCP server, etc.  A couple of nights ago it wasn't serving
>>anything and I could not ping it, so I turned the monitor on
>>and found that I had no synch.  So I tried to reboot it.  It
>>got pretty far into the boot sequence (Fedora Core 3) and
>>hung.  So I tried again.  It didn't get as far so I tried
>>yet again.  This time it quit even quicker, so I figured maybe
>>it was a heat problem and unplugged it for about a half an
>>hour.  When I powered it back up I went into setup so I could
>>watch the cpu temperature.  It started at 36 C and slowly climbed to 45 C where it seemed to level off.  I then turned
>>it off but did not unplug it.  When I came back the next
>>evening, I found it in the state described at the top of this
>>note.
>>
>>One other thing:  When I was trying the reboots the first
>>night, I could power the machine off with the front panel
>>switch but I could not power it back up unless I unplugged
>>it for about 10-15 seconds.  Does this give any hints?
>>
>>I have a digital voltmeter, so I can check voltages out of
>>the power supply.  I haven't done that yet.
>>
>>(Please respond to the list or to hammonds at erols.com.  I am
>>using webmail from work now, so the From address is probably
>>not right.)
>>
>>TIA,
>>Dave
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