Guess That Smell; a technical document covering an old PC on its last legs

Pimp Ninja

Well I turned on my 3 year old Gateway Athlon 650 and it turned itself off. I tried to turn it on again and it wouldnt. I went to check my cables and I got a funny burning smell.. I thought Yeay! dead PSU. Anyway I left it for 10 mins and tried to turn it on again, lo and behold it did, and the smell returned, and got stronger.

Anyway I will be settling into the "what the fcsk is making that smell" task this weekend. And since I was surfing boards at the time, I thought, what better thing to to then let all these wonderful boardsies play the guess the smell game with me.

Inspector Gadget

Erm, have you checked that all of your fans - PSU, CPU, etc - are still spinning? I suspect the bearings in your PSU fan are knackered, and that the PSU is overheating as a result...

Gadget

BTBB

Did this myself last week. Was messing around with PSU fan as it was acting up. Smelt burning. PSU and CPU seemed fine. Continued on, still a smell. 10 minutes later I realised that my table lamp was right up against my monitor and it now has quite a nice brown dent in it. And lots of spiky bits. At least the plastic came off the bulb...

I'd check PSU, mine had tonnes of dust on it. High temperature component + heat = smell. Might want to hoover it off. A (paint)brush works well for fans I found.

BTBB

elexes

cleaning agent on various cables that heat up ? fly gone into your powersupply and u burnt the sucker alive ? cables tuching off the graphics card/processor and starting to melt ?

hmmm i smelt a few ... worst was a family of mice in a pc ...

Pimp Ninja

I dont think that theres anything heating up, its literally 2 or 3 seconds after the machine was powered on that I got the smell. Is this enough time for components to reach smelling temperature?

Dust is probably a good bet, since the side of this case has been off for quite a while. I opened it to pilpher an extra network card for megalan, as it had 2 and havnt closed it since.

I'm also keeping the fact that Ive added some new RAM into it recently enough. Altho when I say new I mean aquired from friends that no longer need it, so its not exactly new.

All the same havnt had time to explore these options yet, however first stop on the train to Smell town will be the PSU.

BTBB

Actually any component that has air flow will collect dust. Just last week I cleaned out a PC at work that was lying around on the floor for at least a year since its last cleaning/opening while installing a DVD drive. Blasting it with high pressure air did the trick.

Dust really build up in PSUs, opened 4 last week to find spare to fix forementioned PSU fan. All were full of dust.

BTBB

Pimp Ninja

Well.. I got distracted by an accidental fishing trip but I did get to check the PSU on Sunday afternoon before heading out. PSU itself was manky with dust which got cleaned up.

The RAM looks ok.. no discolouration si I dont think thats the culprit.

Next step will be to check the CPU and see if anything is happening there. After that a look at the expansion cards, then the mainoard.

Pimp Ninja

Ok figured it

Its a 12 gig HDD that Ive had 3 years exploded.. well less dramatic than exploded but it still burnt out a chip on the controller board. Ive tried hunting down these controlller boards before, and really its not worth the hassle, so I'm gonna take it apart and make a nice clock outta it.

Next problem is that that drive was part of a 3 disk spanned volume.. so I guess that Ive lost everything.. It was my fileserver

Ah well that will learn me again.

Inspector Gadget

Originally posted by Pimp Ninja
Its a 12 gig HDD that Ive had 3 years exploded.. well less dramatic than exploded but it still burnt out a chip on the controller board. Ive tried hunting down these controlller boards before, and really its not worth the hassle, so I'm gonna take it apart and make a nice clock outta it.

Out of curiousity, if I was to say the word "Quantum", followed quickly by the word "Fireball", would I be ringing any bells here?

Gadget
P.S.> Hard luck about the disk failure. However, I think you've learned an important lesson about the big downside about spanned volumes in all their flavours... the odds of some disk going awry increase dramatically the more you chain together.

Pimp Ninja

Its already been trashed.. and yeah it was a Quanum FB.. I think I'll be using either single drives, or something other than striping next time I try this..

hehe..

Ah well. happens. I'm not miffed as most of my stuff is backed up offsite, (read: a friends apt) so i can get most of it back with a day of leeching

po0k

RAID 0+1, striping and mirroring, needs multiples of 2, starting at 4 drives.
You can get up to 4x the performance of 1 drive, albeit with half the total posisble capacity used for the mirroring.

lookinga t getting 2x 120gig WD 8meg Spedcial Ed. myself in RAID0.

Course, Raid 3 or 5 is the way to go for effiecent reliable failover data storage.
Have fun pricing a RAID5 card

Pimp Ninja

I've been considering that since i set up the volume in the first place, I just never got round to it, unfortunately.

Originally posted by SyxPak
Have fun pricing a RAID5 card

Shouldnt have too much of a problem, I work for a trade hardware vendor

Capt'n Midnight

Had a bad batch of Quantum Fireballs - head crashes and load of controller chips fried (down near the Power connector) and swapping boards didn't make a blind bit of difference

and the kicker - they all died just after the three year cover expired...

Pimp Ninja

Well I was working away on another machine last night and it went bbye. Rebooted and it seems that the HDD is gone in that too.. Its aonther Quantum Fireball (this time a 9 gig). I have to obviously give it a couple of checks but first thoughts are another nice clock

po0k

I've got an 850meg Quantum humming happily away at home, running in my Debian "Networking Playpen"

Inspector Gadget

Originally posted by SyxPak
I've got an 850meg Quantum humming happily away at home, running in my Debian "Networking Playpen"

[yoda]Tempt fate should you not[/yoda]... I had a 10GB Fireball lct pop a chip (literally) during the week... two weeks work on my Master's gone up in "magic smoke" :mad:

Gadget

po0k

Join Compsoc. Use our (soon to be in our hands) RAID5 SCSI array. Watch Bill Hicks. Suck Satan's Cock™.

Inspector Gadget

Originally posted by SyxPak
Join Compsoc. Use our (soon to be in our hands) RAID5 SCSI array. Watch Bill Hicks. Suck Satan's Cock™.

Watch Bill Hicks? You got video? :eek:

Woo.... tell me more!

Gadget

po0k

Kharn had a DVD up at his house over the weekend, I think it's his brother's.

www.play.com ?

Inspector Gadget

Originally posted by SyxPak
Kharn had a DVD up at his house over the weekend, I think it's his brother's.

www.play.com ?

Damn. Have only ever seen (note: seen) about 45 seconds of everyone's favourite antichrist Texan; have a few of his albums (started a bit backwards by getting "Rant in E Minor" first, but what the hey...

Must see if I can get from somewhere...
Cheers,
Gadget
P.S.> It doesn't have any episodes of "Let's Hunt and Kill Billy Ray Cyrus" on it, by any chance? Complete with sawn-off shotgun and the hounds of hell?...