I recently experienced a power loss for about 1/2 second. All my computers (4 of 'em) powered on. Except one.
Nighthawk, my dev machine, didn't come on.
Here's the story: about 2 years ago, my dad asked me to build a computer for him. I did, but I decided that instead of getting a case for him, I would get an upgraded case for my own PC and give him my old one. So I went on geeks.com (back then it was computergeeks.com) and ordered the parts, and built the PC. Everything worked fine for about a year.
I was on the phone with a Microsoft tech support rep one day, seeking help in my battle to get Windows to activate. I was transferred to higher-level tech-support reps several times, and I eventually ended up with someone actually in Redmond. He told me to shut down the computer and unplug any optional devices. So I proceeded to shut down the computer, and when I did, smoke began to seep out of the PSU. I know, not good.
I called geeks.com and grilled 'em about it, and even though the case/PSU combo was way past the warranty, they sent me a new PSU for free. So they have some pretty great customer service. There's just one problem.
The replacement died too.
So last Friday night, at around 2:40AM, the power got cut off and all my computers rebooted, including my server which was going for a record uptime. I had survived about 2 weeks without rebooting. All the computers clicked right back on, including a junker 200MHz box that I got for $4.99 at a computer sale. But not Nighthawk. Immediately I unplugged my poor little computer and proceeded to investigate the situation. The PSU was unusually warm, but it wasn't hot to the touch and it didn't seem to smell like smoke or anything. So I cleared Nighthawk's BIOS and tried again. Nothing.
I got online and sent a support claim to geeks.com, but since this happened on a Friday night, my claim won't be answered until at least tomorrow. I managed to get my hands on a friend's power supply, it's only 300W but I figured it would be enough to transfer some files and run fsck on my ReiserFS openSuSE partition.
Nighthawk still refuses to boot. The system freezes whenever I turn it on. Luckily my board has a mini display on it that gave me an error code: 0x25 (hex). I dug out my mobo manual and this is what it said:
25h: Early PCI initialization:
[*]Enumerate PCI bus number.
[*]Assign memory & I/O resource.
[*]Search for valid VGA device & VGA BIOS, and put it into C000:0
Seeing as this is where memory and I/O resources are assigned, I have good reason to suspect a resource conflict. But there were none of those before. Another possibility is that since the video card is also initialized at that stage, that the power consumption goes over 300W.
My system specs are as follows:
[*]Tyan S2495ANRS motherboard
[*]AMD Athlon XP 2500+ CPU
[*]1GB Corsair Value Select RAM
[*]nVidia GeForce FX 5200 PersonalCinema video card - 8xAGP, 128MB RAM
[*]2 hard disks: Western Digital 160GB, and Western Digital 30GB
[*]Optical drives: an old generic 52X CD-ROM, and a Sony DRU-800 DVD±R/W drive
[*]Generic floppy drive
[*]Cheapo sound card, currently not installed
[*]LOTS of fans, meaning significant power consumption
Anybody have any ideas as to what's going on here? Thanks in advance.
-dandaman32
Nighthawk, my dev machine, didn't come on.
Here's the story: about 2 years ago, my dad asked me to build a computer for him. I did, but I decided that instead of getting a case for him, I would get an upgraded case for my own PC and give him my old one. So I went on geeks.com (back then it was computergeeks.com) and ordered the parts, and built the PC. Everything worked fine for about a year.
I was on the phone with a Microsoft tech support rep one day, seeking help in my battle to get Windows to activate. I was transferred to higher-level tech-support reps several times, and I eventually ended up with someone actually in Redmond. He told me to shut down the computer and unplug any optional devices. So I proceeded to shut down the computer, and when I did, smoke began to seep out of the PSU. I know, not good.
I called geeks.com and grilled 'em about it, and even though the case/PSU combo was way past the warranty, they sent me a new PSU for free. So they have some pretty great customer service. There's just one problem.
The replacement died too.
So last Friday night, at around 2:40AM, the power got cut off and all my computers rebooted, including my server which was going for a record uptime. I had survived about 2 weeks without rebooting. All the computers clicked right back on, including a junker 200MHz box that I got for $4.99 at a computer sale. But not Nighthawk. Immediately I unplugged my poor little computer and proceeded to investigate the situation. The PSU was unusually warm, but it wasn't hot to the touch and it didn't seem to smell like smoke or anything. So I cleared Nighthawk's BIOS and tried again. Nothing.
I got online and sent a support claim to geeks.com, but since this happened on a Friday night, my claim won't be answered until at least tomorrow. I managed to get my hands on a friend's power supply, it's only 300W but I figured it would be enough to transfer some files and run fsck on my ReiserFS openSuSE partition.
Nighthawk still refuses to boot. The system freezes whenever I turn it on. Luckily my board has a mini display on it that gave me an error code: 0x25 (hex). I dug out my mobo manual and this is what it said:
25h: Early PCI initialization:
[*]Enumerate PCI bus number.
[*]Assign memory & I/O resource.
[*]Search for valid VGA device & VGA BIOS, and put it into C000:0
Seeing as this is where memory and I/O resources are assigned, I have good reason to suspect a resource conflict. But there were none of those before. Another possibility is that since the video card is also initialized at that stage, that the power consumption goes over 300W.
My system specs are as follows:
[*]Tyan S2495ANRS motherboard
[*]AMD Athlon XP 2500+ CPU
[*]1GB Corsair Value Select RAM
[*]nVidia GeForce FX 5200 PersonalCinema video card - 8xAGP, 128MB RAM
[*]2 hard disks: Western Digital 160GB, and Western Digital 30GB
[*]Optical drives: an old generic 52X CD-ROM, and a Sony DRU-800 DVD±R/W drive
[*]Generic floppy drive
[*]Cheapo sound card, currently not installed
[*]LOTS of fans, meaning significant power consumption
Anybody have any ideas as to what's going on here? Thanks in advance.
-dandaman32