Old (Un)Reliable
Well, I've got my "big" computer back in the fray now. I had a power supply problem (the second one for this particular box) that initially drove me nuts. I could not figure out what was happening at first. It would suddenly go into a black screen crash - not a blue screen - we're talking a reboot. I just replaced the power supply (with a temporary one, a leftover from a rebuild of my son's computer.) The power supply is very small by today's standards (250W) but is originally from a Dell. They seem to have very, very reliable power supplies. My old Dell Optiplex GX1 (running Ubuntu now) is very elderly now and still has a rock solid power supply after all these years.
This computer was basically on - all the time - for more than two years after the initial power supply failure (which happened less than a month after I built it). So it's nice to have it back in the game, so to speak. It really has been a relatively reliable box as these things go. But my old GX1 is also proving very reliable running Ubuntu - it is running right now, in fact, connected through a KVM switch with this computer. It's a good thing having a backup.
Yeah, that was overly geeky, wasn't it? Hey, I'm a hardware kind of guy.
Geek Stuff | Gaius Sunday, 20 May , 2007
By Purple Avenger, Sunday, 20 May , 2007 @ 8:14 pm
I’m running on a backup box right now…PII 350mhz. But it has 768M of memory so its not beating up the drives much.
The primary’s HDD went belly up with the “tick, tick, tick, tick” of infinite recalibration death.
Both boxes were free out of dumpsters, so I suppose I can’t complain about failures.
By Gaius, Sunday, 20 May , 2007 @ 8:21 pm
Braggart. My “new” Ubuntu GX1 is a PII at 333MHz with 384Mb (the hot rod Yugo).
(Runs perfectly, I might add.)