[H-GEN] technical problems

[Bruce Campbell]

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On Mon, 13 Mar 2000, Michael wrote:

s35582> I am having two seperate problems on my home machines that I can't figure
s35582> out and I was wondering if anybody else out there had any suggestions.
s35582> 
s35582> 1)
s35582> Machine, p120 chip, 8mb Ram, 8 speed CDROM drive
s35582> Every time I try and mount the CDROM drive now it says 
s35582> 
s35582> mount failed : no medium found
s35582> 
s35582> I know the CD-ROM drive is an old one and may have died, I
s35582> just found it odd that the drive died right when I
s35582> upgraded the board.

Simple question - does the motherboard BIOS recognise the CDROM?  Other 
option - CD no longer consistently spins up (see if it does by taking
the drive apart, do not look into laser).  Solution a) spin it yourself,
b) buy new drive.

s35582> 2)
s35582> (different machine on this one)
s35582> Intel Celeron 366, 32mb RAM Trident 4mb 9750 AGP Video card 4.3gb HD
s35582> 
s35582> All this will sometimes suceed in doing is to let the
s35582> machine boot up. Then however a slight bump on the
s35582> table/unit/floor will cause the machine to hang and then
s35582> sometimes restart. After this happens the machine will
s35582> refuse to restart and the monitor will go back to flashing
s35582> and refusing to boot up.

There are two common causes of this:

	You have a 'dry joint' somewhere in the computer.  As you mention
	changing the video card around, the problem is most likely on the
	motherboard itself.  A 'dry joint', for those unfamilar with the
	term, is where a soldered connection is 'dry', and does not
	consistently pass the magic electricity through it, and can cause
	odd and highly variable behaviour.

	If you are lucky, it may be within your skills as a solderer to
	both find and repair it (reheat, apply a dab of solder, etc).  If
	you are unlucky (ie, its one of the very fiddly surface-mounted
	chip connections which you can't get to without bridging multiple
	pins), tough ;)

The other is a simple short circuit between the hopefully earthed case,
and a component inside (HDDs in my experience).  Most noticeable by the
annoying 'it sodding well worked before I put it in the case' behaviour,
or the mild electric shocks received when touching the case.

-- 
  Bruce.                                                         | VP/BOFH
  Infinite Monkeys.  Infinite Keyboards.  I see no Shakespeare.  |  HUMBUG


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