Embarassing installation faults...that others should avoid!

subdriver20 · Post by **subdriver20** » Sat Mar 27, 2004 1:58 am

Fan clips for H/S on amd chips, put one on backwards after lapping my TT volcano 7 and could not figure out why my temps were worse than before. and the puppy was down to mirror finish took two days to figure that one out.

geh1 · Post by **geh1** » Sat Mar 27, 2004 3:09 am

OK my turn to tell on myself (and this just happened). I should know better but I was troubleshooting a mobo, had it proped up so I could see it better (trying to read jumper legends, you know the real tiny print on mobo) when one of my cats jumped up on my bench and I touched the back of mobo against the metal chasis, oops. "G"

moral of the story: Keep an uncluttered workspace. oh and no cats in shop!

steel609 · Post by **steel609** » Sat Mar 27, 2004 3:58 am

RTFM.... seems that I am most embarrassed when I can't figure out a problem, and someone says..."Hey, did you look in the little book that came with it." DOH!

and I always thought that was just filler for the box..

Post by **evasive** » Sat Mar 27, 2004 7:23 am

subdriver20 wrote:Fan clips for H/S on amd chips, put one on backwards after lapping my TT volcano 7 and could not figure out why my temps were worse than before. and the puppy was down to mirror finish took two days to figure that one out.

or trying to explain why a machine was blue-screening all the time when about everything was replaced. Until I look from the side to the CPU. Note: this was with a pentium 1 133. Classic mistake...

Post by **evasive** » Sat Mar 27, 2004 7:25 am

webster wrote: Spent 4 hours getting Linux to recognise my SCSI adaptor, finally worked out the IRQ's were silkscreened on wrong, only to find the piece of crap SCSI drive couldnt read the installation files off the CDR.

don't go below 8-speed when trying to read CD-Rs I'll bet that was a 4-speed...

Post by **evasive** » Sat Mar 27, 2004 7:27 am

CDBurner wrote:
evasive wrote:I'm missing the cabling department? Backwards, wrong cables, wrong ports etc? At least one of you must have killed a printer port or a SCSI port when both were using the 25pin subD connector and both parallel and SCSI scanners were around...
Good point, I had forgotten about the several times when I plugged IDE cables in backwards. Thankfully, that's not harmful; the computers just refused to work until I plugged the cables in right. I've never dealt with SCSI, though.

This was external SCSI. Internal SCSI cables can be put on backwards without any adverse effects other than that you don't see any devices on the controller. Sometimes only the wrongly plugged device won't show up but the rest of them will. As if SCSI is better abuse-resistant.

~Rob · Post by **~Rob** » Sat Mar 27, 2004 8:19 am

SDRAM, just force it hard enough so the clips fit.. It works, trust me!!!

Twisty · Post by **Twisty** » Sat Mar 27, 2004 8:33 am

Just rememberd I lent a graphics card to someone who took the heat sinks off it because 'otherwise it didnt fit' and then she wondered why 'smoke and sparks started flying out of it'

don't go below 8-speed when trying to read CD-Rs I'll bet that was a 4-speed...

2 speed external

Remember the ones that required you to put the CD in a cassette holder? I have since binned the internals and stuck a CD burner inside.

Peanya · Post by **Peanya** » Sat Mar 27, 2004 11:50 am

Mine are simple, yet embarrasing: I assemble the case, make sure all my wires are tucked away for good airflow, hook it up and hit the power button, nothing happened.... Oh yeah, front panel connector wires tucked away too...
Dead hard drive.... checked and rechecked and rechecked the BIOS, was set properly. Finally realized although the IDE cable was connected, the power cord was not!

Another dead hard drive... this one boggled me too, but finally it was due to an unhooked IDE cable, cause I formatted one HD and unhooked it so I wouldn't accidentally format that one as it was my backup HD.

~Rob · Post by **~Rob** » Sat Mar 27, 2004 11:56 am

On the power side of things (wouldn't you love for me to build you a PC!!!)

We got a new set of motherboards for the systems we sell. Every was easy to plug in and I tucked it all out the way, USB in right, and the front panel as well.

Pressed the on button, nothing. First I checked the button was connected, then I swapped the CMOS jumper cos that was set to clear on the old boards, then I tried the power incase the power cord had a fuse blown.

Finally I checked the back, to find a switch on the power supply... so simple, but 10mins of investigating!!