Any suggestions, please? -UPDATE - BUT NO JOY -- RESOLVED....WELL SORT OF......

[Li Li]

On Sun, 2010-10-17 at 16:49 +1100, Basil Chupin wrote:
> On 17/10/2010 16:00, Basil Chupin wrote:

[ much snippage ]

> Anyway, to cut a short answer long, (but this does not gel with my 
> opening post!) I ended up putting my slow, old, backup system into the 
> Antec case which contained by original (failed) system. I transferred it 
> yesterday with the psu, the modo, the lot...... and non of it would 
> work! The whole sheebang was DEAD!
> 
> Spent the evening reading RED MARS, had several bottles of wine (maybe 
> more....can't recall), cried a bit on the pretzels, went to bed..... 
> Woke up in the middle of the night - and concluded that there is 
> something wrong with the *power switch* on the Antec case.

Told you 3 weeks ago to take the MB out of the case, take everything
(including memory) out of the MB, take the power supply out of the case
and plug the two together on a wooden table in an uncarpeted room with
your feet bare (static precautions) and short the PWR pins together
briefly with your pocket knife blade.  Signs of life?  Add stuff back
gradually until it fails.

You do realize that the power switch on an ATX case is a normally open
momentary switch?  Briefly shorting the 2 PWR pins on the MB does the
job just as well.  I don't think I've ever seen one of these fail
because they are so simple, but there's always a first time.

Time to give anyone interested LL's three rules of electronic
troubleshooting:

* The power supply is guilty until proven innocent.
* Simplify, simplify!
* Start from the middle and work outwards toward both ends

Power supplies are the big failure point with most electronics, personal
computers included.  They suck in dust, some of which is conductive,
they bear the brunt of the power company's misadventures and they get
hot.  You can't test a PSU except under load and learn anything much.
The little testers they sell for ATX PSUs are a start, but hardly
definitive.

Simplify is what you do when you have too many variables.  Maybe the
memory is bad.  Well, eliminate it!  The thing will try to boot and find
it has no memory and beep like crazy.  No harm done.  Maybe the disk
drives are doing something bad to the PSU.  Disconnect the suckers and
see.  Take things out of the case and work on a bench or table.  Fifteen
years ago I was given a PC by a member of the American Academy of
Science, a very elite group indeed.  He had made it from parts from
Tiger Direct but it never worked right, failing at the critical point in
his pr0n downloads or something.  I played with it a while, noticed the
intermittent failures and took the MB out of the case.  There was a
mounting post that didn't correspond to a hole in the MB and it shorted
the whole thing out when it warmed up. BSEE beats Ph.D every time.
Simplify!

Starting from the middle is mostly for when you are working from a
circuit diagram and you've already proven the PSU innocent and
simplified as much as you can, and doesn't really apply to computer
repair, in which we mostly use the American way -- hang new parts in
until it works.  Surface mounted chips have made life so uninteresting.

> 
> After I got up and found the cleanest dirty shirt, I tested the switch 
> with the multimeter. No sign of life. So I sprayed the switch with CRC 
> 2-26 - and everything started to work: to whirr and spin and grind, 
> except for the video card fan[1].
> 
> But now I have 2x 120mm and an 80mm fans spinning at full speed 'cause 
> the psu can't control them like the original (Antec 550watt) psu could - 
> it all sounds like the Red Baron is revving up for a take-off! :-) . But 
> I can get mail, I can post, I can browse.... What else is there in life?
> 
> [1] In another thread - I think it's in the offtopic list - I mentioned 
> that I used to lubricate fans with molybdenum past. Well this one was, 
> but what I discovered is that the paste had hardened (?from heat) and 
> the fan would not spin. I had to take it apart, clean it and lubricate it.

Marvel Mystery Oil! A wonderful North American product; I dunno if they
still even make it.  It was for top cylinder lubrication, so it was kind
of viscus, maybe SAE 35.  A can will last a long life time of fan
lubrication.  Any similar product would probably work.  For fans, I like
to pay the couple of bucks more for dual ball bearings, since
re-lubricating sleeve bearings just postpones the inevitable.

-- 
Lilly
godbless --everyone --no-exceptions
Linux 2.6.32-21-generic Linux Mint 9 Isadora, Gnome 2.30.2