[Novalug] Dead Computer Diagnosis

[David A. Hammond]

Hi,

I want to thank everyone who has responded to these questions
so quickly and so thoroughly.  I really appreciate it and
bragged about you guys this morning to my coworkers who
think paid support of proprietary software is the only way
to go.

Most seem to think this is a power supply issue, which was
my original thought also.  I did a quick check of the
output voltages and they seem ok.  (Although as at least one
person pointed out, a multimeter cannot detect excessive
noise on the line. I was hoping to find a bad voltage.  In
other words, the multimeter can confirm a bad supply, but
not a good one.)

The symptoms have also changed again, so maybe this is a
physical problem.  Each time I want to run a test I have to
put the box on the bench, pop the cover, connect power,
keyboard, etc.  But the machine had not been moved for
months before the original problem showed up, so it may be
independent of any physical bouncing.  Who knows?

Anyway, now the machine spins the fans as soon as I plug it
in.  The front panel light never comes on and the front panel
switch has no effect.  It won't stop the fans no matter how
long I hold it in.  I think I have the complete tech manual
on this machine stored somewhere.  I am off work tomorrow so
I will have lots of time to find the manual and explore all
the suggestions you guys gave me.  I am pretty sure I have
another 250W ATX power supply around here.

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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