Hi all, I always try to share anything I learn in tech for the benefit of others. I recently had a "negative reinforcement" experience that I'm going to share, in hopes that someone else will avoid that particular pothole. So, you can laugh at me (but keep it to yourself), or pity me, but hopefully, this will remind people of how not to behave around a pc.
So, I have one computer with multiple graphics cards in it. Each card has one or two of its own fans, and each has one or two of its own power cables from the power supply. I had ordered a new graphics card and was excited to install it. I shut down the machine, turned it to face my chair, and took off the cover. I went through the mechanical procedure of installing the card and connecting the power cables. I power on the machine, and, at this point, everything is actually working. I should have put on the cover and walked away. With multiple cards jammed in together, you cannot tell if the fans on the cards are running. I've had one other graphics card running a bit hot so I wanted to check the fans. (It turns out that that old card has one failing fan.) I got this brilliant idea to check the fans by inserting a business card between the pc cards. I would let it GENTLY brush up against the fan hub, and if I hear a humming noise, then the fan blade is turning. This actually worked a couple of times. But, I pushed my luck too far. At one point, the business card got sucked INTO the fan blade. Now, this fan is only 2" wide, but you'd better believe it has some inertia when it's spinning. I heard this loud POP sound and then this continual GRINDING sound. Note to self, grinding sounds and pc's don't mix. I immediately turned off the power switch on the power supply, not even trying to properly shut down the machine. I proceeded to remove every card from the chassis and examine each. On my NEW card, one fan blade is partly cracked at the hub and the blade is protruding outside the housing. I gently bend it back, in hopes that it will work well enough. I proceed to reinstall all the cards and replace the wires. Then I power up the machine. I find that one graphics card is not working. A quick survey of the setup shows that I failed to connect the two auxiliary power cables for that card. So, I plug them in, WITH THE SYSTEM POWER ON. (OK, OK, it was late, brain was not at maximum efficiency.) I reboot the machine. Now, every time the OS tries to start, the machine reboots again. (Ron goes into a mild tantrum, considers weeping or screaming or both.) So, I think to myself, I trashed the boot loader or something when I turned off the power. I go get the Ubuntu boot repair cd and run it. No help. I run a live cd to recover some critical files and figure I'll just restore from a backup. Can't see the hard drive. I run a memory test, which is fine. I'm thinking, WHAT THE HECK IS HAPPENING? Then it hits me, maybe it's not a bad hdd, maybe it's a bad card. I have never ever had this happen, which is why it never occurred to me. I remove every card from the system, AGAIN, except for 1 to drive the monitor. TA DA ... the system boots fine, like nothing ever happened. I shut down, and put the cards back in one at a time, and reboot. When I get to one particular card, the boot loop symptoms return. It's one of my older cards, WHICH WAS WORKING THE DAY BEFORE. I spend another hour carefully removing and installing things in different orders to determine if it's the card, or the power supply, or the motherboard slot. When this is all said and done, I've determined that one of my older cards is damaged and I have to RMA it. Whether that was due to the new card's fan blade grinding on the 2nd card's pc board, or whether it was due to me connecting the power to the 2nd card when the system was on, or something else, I don't know. But, now it's in a box waiting to be shipped to the factory. When this fiasco was done, I had a pc which was functioning at a lower level than it was, has a new card with a partially cracked fan blade, and one card is being returned to the factory. And, it's 3 AM so I haven't gotten and didn 't get much sleep. AARG! So, dear readers, you may take some valuable lessons from my sad experience. 1) DON'T BE STUPID. If you're brain is not really sharp at a given time, don't work on a pc. 2) DON'T TOUCH A FAN BLADE on a pc fan that's running, even a little one, WITH ANYTHING, even a piece of paper. 3) Always CONNECT POWER CABLES WITH THE SYSTEM OFF. Also, note that the spacing between the top part of the adjacent cards is variable depending on how you fasten the retaining screws. Once the cards are fastened, with the power off, make sure you can, at least, slide a business card back and forth between each pair of cards and that there are no protrusions from one card that will hit the next. Hopefully, you will learn, or relearn, from my experience. Trust me, you don't want to repeat it. 8-( Sincerely, Ron -- Sent from my Android Acer A500 tablet with bluetooth keyboard and K-9 Mail. Please excuse my potential brevity if I'm typing on the touch screen. (PS - If you email me and don't get a quick response, you might want to call on the phone. I get about 300 emails per day from alternate energy mailing lists and such. I don't always see new email messages very quickly.) Ron Frazier 770-205-9422 (O) Leave a message. linuxdude AT techstarship.com _______________________________________________ tech-chat mailing list [email protected] http://lists.linuxmoose.com/mailman/listinfo/tech-chat
