Aaaaaargh! I hate when YOUR the computer tech and the computer part breaks on YOU!

[jonnyGURU]

So I've got my Linux box. 3 NICs, Riva TNT2 Vanta, 128MB, Soundblaster, Fireport SCSI card with a SCSI CDROM and burner, Maxtor 20GB. Decent machine. It's supposed to be the internet gateway, file server print server, etc. at the house. Most importantly it's a K6-III 400 on an FIC PA2013 w/ 2MB of L3 cache. It's almost as quick as my Athlon.

I was gone for a long time for Thanksgiving, so I lent it to a guy at work so he could use it to set something up in NT (using his drive, of course) and I didn't have time to build a new box at work until I got back.

I got back, got the new PC built up and switched the hard drives.

I fired up my box, got into KDE, started up Netscape and then... as soon as I went to type in a URL... NOTHING! The keyboard AND mouse failed to respond! :Q

I reboot the machine and got the highly illogical &quot;KEYBOARD NOT FOUND ERROR, PRESS <F1> TO CONTINUE&quot;.

So, apparently the fuse blew on the PS/2 ports. CRAP! I could pull everything and desolder the fuse and just bridge the traces or go ahead and upgrade since I'll have to pull the board anyway.

The damn board is two days out of it's 1 year warranty and I can't find another like it. I could sell the K6-III and take the money I was GOING to buy a new Athlon with and just build a new socket A for myself with a K7TPro 2A. I'd just settle for a slower CPU for my main box than the 1GHz I was planning on, and a faster one for the server than the K6.

God dammit. My whole point is... When you got to deal with this sh&iuml;t all day, it REALLY sucks to have to deal with it yourself and it doesn't happen to ME very often!

Grrr!

 

[vi edit]

I hate it when the computer tech breaks down.


[edit] added winky so I didn't sound like a butthole

 

[piku]

<< The damn board is two days out of it's 1 year warranty and I can't find another like it. >>



That doesn't seem to stop anyone else...

 

[Windogg]

jonny, as a tech you should know the obvious.

FIC SUCKS!!!!!



Yea, I know they are owned by VIA but i've always hated FIC boards.

Windogg

 

[jonnyGURU]

Hate them all you want.

I've actually had good luck with my PA2013 (until today) and my Athlon board is an SD11.

I'm pretty sure they are NOT owned by VIA. Reason being is that the SD11 has an Irongate Northbridge, not VIA and they never put out a VIA KX133 chipset based board. Also, they have a Transmeta based mobile despite the fact that VIA's new Cyrix efforts are very low watt and run with no active cooling. Also, the KW15 has an 810e chipset, the VB-601 has a BX chipset. Besides, no mention of VIA in the &quot;company profile&quot;.

Hmm.....

No problem. I'm sure I'm just &quot;lucky&quot;. My next board will be an MSI.

 

[SexEPid]

Hard day at work, man?


Pid, TYRP

 

[GL]

If it's just the internet gateway, and it has USB ports, can you not plug in a USB keyboard, go to the BIOS, and enable that &quot;Halt on no errors&quot; or whatever that option is. The computer should boot into Linux no problem. For about half a year, I had a computer with no video card, no floppy, no keyboard, and of course no mouse, as my linux internet gateway. Worked like a charm. This might hold you over until you have some extra cash.

-GL

 

[Ken g6]

Or if you don't want to get a USB keyboard either, I'm sure that somebody in Distributed Computing would take it. With 2mb cache, it would make a great part of a SETI crackrack. Or maybe someone would want it for OGR; K6-X's are great at that you know.

 

[jonnyGURU]

The USBs work fine. I'm sure someone would actually want to BUY IT since it works perfectly otherwise.

I'm not willing to spring for a USB kbd and mouse just to make this board work.

I can't fix it with solder either. I looked for a fuse and it looks as if there is a &quot;self healing fuse&quot;.

After I saw that, I figured it may start working again. I hooked it back up and it didn't work. For some reason, I shut it off and turned it back on again and I hit DEL on the keyboard and it went into BIOS. I hit ESC and let it boot up. I then went into Linux and the keyboard didn't work anymore, but the mouse did.

Man! This thing got FLAKY!