Comments on: Why, what?

By: Adam Williamson

Adam Williamson — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 17:18:25 +0000

if you’re getting that kind of degrading, then yeah, it could be the PSU dropping dead. or, check for dying (leaking) capacitors on the motherboard itself, or bad RAM.

By: kbrae

kbrae — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 15:59:06 +0000

Yeah, something along those lines. My guess by now is, that the main board is slowly degrading, causing all these almost random symptoms.
The weird things are, that it started out of the blue without messing with hardware. Also, the previous four NIC started preventing the box from booting sometime after removing yet another card. It did work for a brief period, there’s no direct correlation to any single change…

By: anon

anon — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 14:11:51 +0000

Sounds like a power supply problem — either something popped on one of the cards (or the main board) or it’s the PSU. Alternatively — overheating?

By: Adam Williamson

Adam Williamson — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 05:49:07 +0000

resource conflict, I’d guess. which physical slot a device is in can change what resources it’s assigned by the BIOS, and obviously what other devices are also present affects this too.

By: kbrae

kbrae — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 02:54:21 +0000

Hmm, the power should be fine, not that much in the box, and I already removed stuff — but thanks nonetheless for the hint, Flávio!
Much appreciated, I probably should try that. What’s really puzzling me is the shuffle of cards, both inside the box and with spare parts I luckily had around. What ~~works~~ boots almost looks random. No single change is sufficient.

By: Flávio

Flávio — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 02:35:55 +0000

Try the PSU.

In my experience, when hardware that worked perfectly right starts to fail en masse without aparent cause, usually the PSU isn’t pulling all the juice it should.

just my 2 cents. Hope it helps.