Orpington Astronomical Society

Back Room => Updates and Upsets => Topic started by: Rick on Mar 23, 2004, 19:48:00

Title: Gallery archive down...
Post by: Rick on Mar 23, 2004, 19:48:00
My home machine seems to have gone splut for some reason or other, but I'm at work at the moment, so it'll just have to wait til this evening...
Title: Gallery archive down...
Post by: Rick on Mar 24, 2004, 05:57:00
Hopefully back... CPU fan cooked itself and machine stopped. CPU temperature at 99F when I got home! May have severely limited life expectancy....
Title: Gallery archive down...
Post by: Mike on Mar 24, 2004, 06:31:00
Use pop tarts as your heat sink, then at least if it overheats it will do something useful just before going pop.
Title: Gallery archive down...
Post by: Rick on Mar 24, 2004, 19:46:00
Not quite hot enough for pop-tarts, thankfully....
Title: Gallery archive down...
Post by: Rocket Pooch on Mar 24, 2004, 21:15:00
Blame it on Microsoft, everything else is.
Title: Gallery archive down...
Post by: Ian on Mar 24, 2004, 21:36:00
I think a dead fan might be a little hard to pin on MS, although I salute the attempt. In any case, if I know Rick, that box will not be running MS software...

If it still works after a Proc fan failure, unless it's a particularly slow machine, Rick is very, very lucky.
Title: Gallery archive down...
Post by: Rick on Mar 25, 2004, 00:23:00
It's got a Zalman "flower" heatsink, and there were two other fans (one at the back of the case and one in the PSU) pulling air past it in addition to the big slow Zalman fan which was supposed to be pushing air over it (but had seized). The efficiency of its cooling was impaired but not totally destroyed....

...and yes, hard to pin anything on M$ in this case, as the nearest it gets to M$ kit is the cracker/worm break-in attempts it blithely ignores.... :wink:
Title: Gallery archive down...
Post by: Mike on Mar 26, 2004, 00:57:00
LOL
Title: Gallery archive down...
Post by: Rick on Mar 31, 2004, 02:27:00
Hmmm... This time I think it's BT who've gone splut, though it might just possibly be my router. Packets get to the Demon/BT interface at anchor-bthg-r26a.access.demon.net but no further. :/
Title: Gallery archive down...
Post by: Rick on Mar 31, 2004, 02:45:00
Hmmm... BT's bit might now be back, but I think my router needs a talking to....
Title: Gallery archive down...
Post by: Rick on Apr 01, 2004, 23:10:00
...and again it seems to have vanished. This time it looks like my router's at fault. Ian, what sort of router do you have these days? Did you ever cure the problems you had with the Alcatel one, or did you ditch it?
Title: Gallery archive down...
Post by: Ian on Apr 03, 2004, 06:27:00
nothings changed. I am still using the Xytel one supplied by BT. My problems were all caused at the exchange.
Title: Gallery archive down...
Post by: Rick on Apr 03, 2004, 21:27:00
Hmmm... In my case it seems to be triggered by problems atthe exchange, and the end result is that a route (or sometimes just half a route) vanishes. On Thursday afternoon my logs were still full of inbound attacks that were being blocked, but nothing was getting out, so two-way communication wasn't possible. I was in a hurry so I just power-cycled the router, and that brought things back to life, but it's not so easy when I'm awy from home... :wink:
Title: Gallery archive down...
Post by: Ian on Apr 05, 2004, 19:15:00
in PCWorld they had some X10 starter kits cheap. That's what I ended up using to remote powercycle the router. I used a Unix tool called Heyu to control it. They may still have some...
Title: Gallery archive down...
Post by: Rick on Apr 05, 2004, 19:44:00
Cool! There's some X10 support stuff for Linux. Maybe I should have a look. Never noticed any X10 kit over here before. The webcam motion-detection system I'm playing with (//www.zoneminder.com) has some X10 interfacing to hook in things like PIR detectors and alarm systems.

Given that the router's usually still up and visible from the home side, I may just try to figure a way (probably using checkservice (http://www.linvision.com/checkservice/)) to tell it to re-boot itself. Main problem is determining when the link really is down. Wouldn't want the router to re-boot itself every time BT took a short break....
Title: Gallery archive down...
Post by: Rick on Jun 11, 2004, 22:47:00
After a some stability for a while, my ADSL link's decided to take a time-out today. I wonder which bit has cooked itself this time... :/
Title: Gallery archive down...
Post by: Rick on Jun 12, 2004, 07:19:00
It should be back now. For some strange reason my ADSL router had decided to re-configure itself in an interesting way, with a default route going nowhere useful at all. Packets came in, but nothing got out....
Title: Gallery archive down...
Post by: Ian on Jun 13, 2004, 07:24:00
I hope it wasn't commenting on the quality of our photos. Beware the mess caused by overflowing bit buckets...
Title: Gallery archive down...
Post by: Rick on Jun 14, 2004, 01:44:00
There was an enormous pile of bits overflowing the bit bucket on Tuesday evening. Took ages to sweep all the spilled bits up, 'cos they get everywhere. Then, of course, there was the question of what to do with them. There's just no market for them these days. I ended up spreading them on the lawn. If they don't act as fertilizer then they'll probably kill the weeds.

:wink: