I don't know what I did to upset the digital gods...

....I mean to say, what are the odds against, in the space of 4 hours,
computer 1 having its PSU fail, computer 2 failing to boot (defective DDR
ram stick), adsl router failing (won't keep saved settings in flash memory)
and a monitor deciding it doesn't want to run at the required resolutions
any more??? I could understand if my house had been hit by a lightning
strike or suchlike but all of this was just completely out of the blue. As
far as I can work out these were 4 completely unrelated problems that all
appeared almost simultaneously. All sorted now but not without considerable
hassle. Most annoying because I had a day off and was planning some bike
fettling. Mind you, maybe its just as well I didn't touch the bikes...

 

You could have had a 'brown-out' or a surge, that'd do some damage. Do
you have any surge protectors?

 

You've eaten at our local curry-house too?

 

No, but I think I have a similar one here :-/

 

I don't thinks so - for example I don't see how something like that could
have affected computer 2, which was switched off for a week, having been
working perfectly before closedown. Also lots of other electronics in the
house still working perfectly. It was just a rather extreme example of
sod's law.

 

the brownz out could've been months ago and components were weakened rather
than destroyed. You may have more stuff that will die in the next few
months. Alternatively, something you own may be causing the problem.
Something with an interlock switch or a thermostat might be causing spikes
or noise on your mains (could be a neighbour). IME, flash memory is
particularly prone to damage in this way: we had to make sure our test
drones were powered down cleanly after functional testing to ensure the
flash was not corrupted or damaged.

 

Doomed! We're all doomed!

 

It's sort of like what happened to me about 5 years ago. I had a video
editing system set up at home. I had a boot drive then 4 drives set up
as two RAID0s. I wanted the speed of RAID0 so put two in. One was the
one I edited on and the other was a backup. I had a .bat file that was
scheduled to run at 3am every morning and look for new files on my
main array and copy them over.

One day, one of the drives on the backup array died. OK, must go and
get another drive. Wasn't rushed was I? Should have been. 2 days later
one of the drives on the other array died. As they were RAID0, I lost
everything. All drives were bought at the same time and surprisingly
the two that went down did it just as they went out of warranty. It
was hilarious fun at the time . . .

Kev

 

Well thanks for those comforting words. However, I am quite sure it was
just one of those chance combinations of events that make life so
interesting.

 

Had what must have been a considerable black-out here this
morning. Woke up about 7 am to see the radio-controlled clock ticking away
seconds. Didn't think much of it even when I went past the Rechenzentrum
on the way to the pisser and noticed large lap-top's screen was lit up,
just a "Huh?". After taking the pills and coming back up to the RZ I soon
realised that the little lap-top, the Windows machine and the ubuntu
quad-core[1] were switched off, while the SLC5 quad had rebooted and wasn't
running SETI any more. From the battery discharge graph in MobileMeter on
the big lappy, the power must have been off for several minutes. Netbook
downstairs survived on its battery.

Hmm, all my machines at work are reporting in, so it can't have been
extensive enough to affect the Uni.

[1] The last two are on a UPS, but with <5 mins capacity.

--
Ivan Reid, School of Engineering & Design, _____________ CMS Collaboration,
Brunel University. Ivan.Reid@[brunel.ac.uk|cern.ch] Room 40-1-B12, CERN
GSX600F, RG250WD "You Porsche. Me pass!" DoD #484 JKLO#003, 005
WP7# 3000 LC Unit #2368 (tinlc) UKMC#00009 BOTAFOT#16 UKRMMA#7 (Hon)
KotPT -- "for stupidity above and beyond the call of duty".

 

I've got a spare Antec 80+ ATX PSU that's cluttering my office. Has
been in use for about a month IIRC.

 

Bet you're über glad about that

Paul.

 

Hey all,

Smells like fishy here.. Things helps better, when you all work 2g, right..??

Lets do rock..!!

Daniel..

.