Our furnace had a little bug
 

The guy came in this morning, and ten minutes later, he said we're probably good to go. Flip the switch, and on comes the furnace.

The problem? The furnace has a pressure sensor of some sort which connects to the outside with a tiny little tube. A certain insect crawled into it probably in search of warmth, died, and slowly got sucked in and plugged up the sensor months later.

Furnace? :surprised:
C'mon, man, I thought you are heating with 580's there... :sad:
:razz:

Thunderbolt and lightning, very very frightening
 

We arrived back at LGW about 0120 this morning. Drive home took about 2 hours, during most of which we could see a massive electrical storm to the north though most of the sky was clear and the roads dry until 10 miles from home, by which time the storm had moved off to the east. By 2 miles from home the roads were half-flooded. At home, there had clearly been a power outage.

Most kit had rebooted OK but the main system, with the ecmnet server, all email history, etc is now broken. It gets through various BIOS checks and then complains about a USB device drawing too much power and shuts down. Removing all external USB devices and plugging in a PS2 keyboard doesn't help. The BIOS complains about a lack of a kbd if nothing is attached but doesn't read anything that is there so I can't even talk to the BIOS.

Looks like it may be a lengthy and/or expensive process to return to normality. :sad:


Posting this from the MacBook used on vacation.

[URL="https://duckduckgo.com/?q=USB+device+drawing+too+much+power&t=debian"]Help for "USB device drawing too much power"[/URL] :smile:

My profound sympathies! I hope that at least the storage device(s) are intact and can be accessed on another system.

[QUOTE=xilman;405996]
Looks like it may be a lengthy and/or expensive process to return to normality. :sad:
[/QUOTE]
Now works, for sufficiently small values of works.

Removing the front USB connector lets the machine boot but both case fans are stationary so something else has broken. Case is currently lying on its side with the (now top) panel removed so that hot air can escape.

Still not using it as I want to give it a good check-out before trusting it for anything productive. May yet have to replace the mobo.

Oh well, I've been muttering about upgrading or replacing that box for a few months now. Time to start researching best value for money systems with decent performance. Note that I want to optimise for GMP-ECM and GNFS rather than LL searching so my view of optimal may differ from that of others here on the forum.

[QUOTE=xilman;406014]

Removing the front USB connector lets the machine boot but both case fans are stationary so something else has broken. Case is currently lying on its side with the (now top) panel removed so that hot air can escape.

[/QUOTE]

I read somewhere about replacement USB cables fixing some issues. Can you test the fans are operational?

The things I'd want to know involve power rails. I.e. where do the usb ports & ps2 port get their 5 volts; what voltage do the case fans use? If I had a spare power supply, I would definitely try it for a fault isolation diagnosis. After all, the power supply is the first thing exposed to external problems.

[QUOTE=paulunderwood;406019]I read somewhere about replacement USB cables fixing some issues. Can you test the fans are operational?[/QUOTE]Managed to get the rear case fan working. Both fans were powered from the same power cable. Connecting them in turn and independently to a different cable showed the front fan did not spin. That fan is physically adjacent to the broken USB sockets and the cable alongside that from the USB header to the sockets. It was also on the upstream side of a daisy chain of Molex connecters from the PSU to the fans.

Everything else in the system seems just fine and I'm posting from it now.

Really weird what an EMP can do, even on a system with a number of important external cables connected to a surge-protected power & ethernet socket block. Took out something undoubtedly delicate (USB) and something which ought to be really resilient (a fan and/or its 2-wire cable) but left alone many more sensitive components.

[QUOTE=xilman;406023]
Really weird what an EMP can do, even on a system with a number of important external cables connected to a surge-protected power & ethernet socket block. Took out something undoubtedly delicate (USB) and something which ought to be really resilient (a fan and/or its 2-wire cable) but left alone many more sensitive components.[/QUOTE]

Quite weird indeed, as my poor old router can attest to. Still not entirely sure how a power outage through a surge protector damaged only the WAN port (and also the firmware for several days, though it miraculously fixed itself)

This product might help you fix your machine.
[url]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ex8oY24zycQ#t=522[/url]