* * * * *

                           A serious lack of power

I walked into the Computer Room at Chez Boca to a squealing UPS
(Uninterruptable Power Supply), but unlike last time this happened [1] the
computers were still powered up. I shutdown both computers and decided to
deal with them after lunch. There wasn't much else I could do at that point,
seeing how the power was out for our entire neighborhood.

After lunch, the power was restored, so I went to power up the Linux box and
… it didn't come on.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX!

I checked the internal cables to make sure none have come loose, evicted
multiple dust bunnies, and even changed the CMOS (Complementary metal-oxide-
semiconductor) battery just to be sure. But nothing I did made the Linux box
power up.

I called my friend Tom Singkornrat (not only is he wise in the way of
hardware, but he lives less than a mile away) and he said that it could be
one of two possible reasons—it could be a bad power supply, or it could be a
bad mother board. He had a spare power supply I could try. Why not?

The only difficult part of the whole procedure was unscrewing the old power
supply from the case. Other than that, the new power supply fit right in and
it powered right up. Great! But for some reason the keyboard wasn't working …


Update later today …

I found the issue with the keyboard [2].


[1] gopher://gopher.conman.org/0Phlog:2021/02/16.1
[2] gopher://gopher.conman.org/0Phlog:2021/08/18.2

Email author at [email protected]

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