Re: Hurricane Bertha

John Larkin wrote:
On Fri, 11 Jul 2008 13:21:48 -0700, Joerg
<notthisjoergsch@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:


Not to change the subject, but I've been developing some firmware in
my spare time, for a box that talks RS232/Ethernet. I've been testing
RS232-mode from my HP computer, cable running under my chair,
box+scope+dvm+counter+laptop+bdm pod crowding my desk. I came in this
morning and nothing worked. A bit of scoping suggested that COM1 on
the HP was dead.


Completely dead? Often that is just an open on those dreaded IDC connectors. Or nowadays maybe a RoHS solder joint ...


We bought 13 identical ProLiant boxes last year. There are 4 spares in
the cube down the hall. We unboxed one, pulled the hot-plug RAID
drives out the front panel of my old one, popped them into the new
one, replugged all the cables (the really hard part, crawling around
in the dark under desks) and at elapsed time about 20 minutes the new
PC was up, and everything works... I'm typing on it now. All apps are
still installed, everything is set up, Internet and mail work just
like before, no problems. Bucks well spent.

The only thing left to do is paint the floppy and CD eject buttons
yellow, so I can find them. Black on black is really dumb.

Last time I lost a PC, a Dell piece-o-crap, my life was miserable for
a week or so.


Hmm, I temporarily lost the 8-year old Dell laptop on my office desk a couple of days ago. First failure. The A/C had hicked up and then the laptop displayed a blue/white flashing LCD. Needed to get some client work done before I could fix this. No big deal, the SW is also available via the other PC, server delivered the files. If it had taken out the server I'd have the files on flash storage. If the house would have burned down I'd have another copy (encrypted) in my jeans pocket.

A PC failure can mean very little worries if one is properly prepared. Always. I had three full-stop full-screech HD failures a long time ago. None caused me any grief, other than driving to the next Compaq service place (always happened on biz trips).

--
Regards, Joerg

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