ill server, the saga continues

[waider]

So I've taken the drives out of Gonzo and put them into the box that doesn't recognise drives that big, but you can configure it for no drives and Linux will do the rest, and, well, at least all my data's intact. I've backed up the system disk to a convenient laptop (!) and started trying to eliminate possible faults with Gonzo's motherboard. At this point I'm strongly beginning to suspect that it's a terminal motherboard issue, such as a spontaneously dead IDE chipset.

Comments

[odaiwai.livejournal.com]

are any of the capacitors on the mobo blown? that can lead to strange effects as well as the mobo failing POST.

dave

[waider.livejournal.com]

It's passing POST, though. Some of the capacitors around the CPU - which is coincidentally close to the drives, which were running pretty hot - have some brown residue on them which could be capacitor innards, but could also just be leftover manufacturing resin of some sort.

[odaiwai.livejournal.com]

Hmm, brown goop on the capacitors is pretty certainly an indication of failure. Try replacing them and see. It's not as difficult as you'd think. You just need a soldering iron, more capacitors (you can use higher voltage caps if they'll fit on the board) and some beer or other cold beverage.

The beer is for drinking while you're working, or dipping your fingers in if you grab a hot component by mistake.

I resurrected a dual Socket 370 board with a soldering iron and a handful of capacitors. Upgrading the voltage seems to be ok, but you should probably keep to the same capacitance.

I know that the voltage is not too important because my webserver/mailserver/workstation has been running 24/7 on the new board since I fixed it here. (18/October/2003 - my blog has the wrong dates.)

dave