> I believe you. :) *grin*
> Electronics (chips that is) either goes bad within the first few months, > or lives for 15-20 years before the failure rate start to climb again. > The initial failures are caused by defects, the later ones by `wearing > out'. So, if the box is a few years old it is less likely to be a > problem with the electronics than if the box is new. Okay. I also found the BP6 site someone else mentioned. I'm not the only one w/ stability problems, although they seem to be getting worse lately... Possibly what you're talking about - but that's just wild speculation. Damn, I might have to stick a fan on my chipset! What's the world coming to!?! > Also, overheating is not just a CPU (or wherever else they put > temperature sensors) problem. If you have a bad bus transceiver (for > example) it could cause the box to crash hard and you would never > realize that is the problem, unless you checked its temperature with a > thermometer (bad chips tend to run hot). The burnin (they still do that > I assume) process should weed out defective chips, but ocassionally it > will weken a marginal chip to the point where it fails prematurely. So I'm going to put a new BIOS on, and cross my fingers. If that fails, how do I go about testing the individual components? (eg 'bus transceiver' or chipset) To do the chipset, do I just "use" it heavily? heh heh. I do run RC5 24/7 and commonly run intensive stuff over that. Come to think about it, it's been crashing after the morning cron job. That does a massive "find" for something (forgot what, exactly) - but that would stress the chipset and bus, and then right after that RC5 keeps plugging away, and then a couple MP3z are cronned to wake me up. Huh. Maybe it doesn't like playing MP3z after it's had a rough day searching for things on the disk... Ahhh. speculation. And I thought I was getting a steal... Well, crashing once a month is kinda worth the 2X price difference, I suppose. Hell, I'm just a poor college student (well, I certainly am after putting together this box, that is) Just as long as my data stays warm and safe. Time to do some more backups. chris. ----- 26-Apr-00 - 15:05:00
