Tag Archives: motherboard

Forgetting why you replaced hardware

A month or so with nothing to say is not really what’s been going on, lets try to get caught up. Over the Christmas / New Year holiday I decided to move my Fetchmail/Dovecot/LDAP installation to a different machine. Now the machine I had in mind I retired back in March of 08 after having some problems when adding memory. For what I remember it was two of the three DIMM slots were bad. So when it booted fine and loaded Lenny without a hitch I figured we’re good since I didn’t intend to add any memory. Not so.

The point of the move was that box had a mobo with a small form factor their was no room for expansion and I didn’t want to do it with USB. So after getting everything moved adding Squirrelmail, Spamassassin, and Procmail I was ready to tackle the wireless card and firewall rules. That’s when I was reminded why I replaced the box in the first place.

The wireless card worked under Ubuntu and used the MadWifi drivers so getting the same result with Lenny wasn’t going to be a big deal. Unfortunately I could never get the system to boot with the wireless card in it would just stop pre-post with a long beep. That is a memory issue but when pulling the wireless card out and reseeding the memory no problems. Sigh …

So I was stuck. I suppose I could stay with wired but that would bring other challenges into play that I’ve long since put behind me with wireless. In hindsight it was not the best project to start but it was nice to go through the motion. I think the moral here for me is older hardware is good for somethings but if you’ve once diagnosed a problem don’t go back to it …. let it be !!!

Laptop woes, again

Sigh …. a few hours ago I plugged the power cable into the laptop and the battery continued to drain. It didn’t stop until the system shut down. I don’t have any testing equipment but if I had to guess it’s the power connection on the motherboard, again.

It was about a year and a half ago that I replaced the motherboard after debating on getting a new one…. when that very problem occured. It seems like replacing the motherboard then may not have been the best choice. The original plan was to get a machine that would last about five years. In the beginning of 2005 that’s what I was shooting for with the v2000. So for now I’ll pull out the old i200 that it replaced until I can verify that it’s really the motherboard. If it is, it’s time for a new one.

Update: Good news after some testing with a ohmmeter, thanks dad, determined it more the likely was the power cord. After getting a replacement we are back to normal.

The laptop lives again

Seeing as it has been a month since my last post thought I’d get off my bumb and continue the saga of the laptop. A few weeks ago it died completely so I’ve been using the old IBM i200. Since email was really the only data of any size that I used regularly I purchased a $20 USB 2.5 drive case and stuck the 60GB drive in it. The quickest way to get email back was to add a symbolic link from .mozilla-thunderbird to the appropriate local folder on the USB drive. That setup worked for a while and still works today but the battery only lasts about 20 minutes and the fan runs constantly. So last week I finally took it on the chin and ordered a new motherboard.

It arrived yesterday and in about an hour I had it installed and everything back together. It was nice to see when pressing the power button the laptop sprung to life. It booted with no problems and I was back to normal. In the end I hope the money for the board is worth it. At one third the price of a replacement machine a few more years out of it would be preferred.

As for not posting much, just haven’t been “feel’in it”… so to speak. But that’s bound to change as every day is a new one !!!!

The V2000 has died (updated)

Yesterday as I typed at the start of the day the laptop went dark. That was rather unusual as I didn’t notice the battery running low and I was on AC. I switched outlets, nothing. Flipped it over to take out the bottom and nothing obvious as to a problem. So at this point I’m thinking power supply or mother board. No lights when I plug it in, no ticks or sound period. After a buddy came by with a volt meter the cord is good but nothing coming from the A/C outlet on the mother board. That sucks.

A new board is $460 and I’ve only had it since Jan. of 05. I was hoping it would last me five years… barley made it two. So now the decision spend 60 to 80 percent of what it would cost for a new toy to get me back to 05 technology or get another one. That just burns me I paid extra for a gig of memory and a 12 cell battery just so I wouldn’t have to do this in a few years. I even busted out the old i200 to see if I can get Xubuntu running on it. Given enough hammering I think I could but man is it slow. I guess it could be worse, could have been the tower that I use for work and what Kay uses. Maybe I should be thankful that one didn’t bite the dust. I’d hate to think what hoops I’d have to jump through to get the drive to boot with a new motherboard.

Update 3/15/2007: I must be a complete idiot. After much googling and almost deciding on getting an external battery charger, 70 dollars vs the price of a new mother board, I put everything back together and turned it on. Booted with no problems and battery is at full charge. Disconnect the power for a while and plug it back in, battery is charging. If I was smarter I would have thought maybe the drive went bad or faulted which caused the problem in the first place. I never swapped out the drives. This is great cause I didn’t want to replace it… but call me stupid cause I didn’t figure it out sooner.

Update 3/17/2007: Maybe I wasn’t as dumb as I thought. The system has not run for more than 4 hours at a time now. In the last 12 hours won’t stay up more than 5 minutes regardless which drive I put in. Very disappointed at the moment. So I’m working on the old i200 loading Debian.