Sumbitchin’ computer hardware . . .

Just bleedin’ wonderful.  Yesterday afternoon Gráinne, the Land of Færie’s office computer, suddenly quit and went to a black screen with a flashing cursor.  That’s never comforting to see, but I thought the problem was no more than me forgetting to turn off USB-device boot, and that she was trying to boot off the (unbootable) external hard drive.

I should get so lucky.  I yanked the external hard drive loose and hit the power button—and got a black screen with a flashing cursor.  I couldn’t even get a BIOS splash screen.  On restart, I started watching the diagnostic LEDs on the front of the case to see what was going on.  3:4 . . . 1:4 . . . 1:3:4 . . . 2:4 . . . 1:2:3: . . . “click” from somewhere inside the case and it looped:  3:4 . . . 1:4 . . . etc. etc.  Classic no-POST behavior.

Since it was a classic no-POST, I treated it to some classic no-POST troubleshooting:  clear CMOS configuration, strip the system to power supply, motherboard, and processor, hit the power switch and and see what you get.  I ought to have heard a series of beep codes and seen a 1 diagnostic LED, which is “can’t find no memory noplace!”  I got 3:4, which is the code I would expect to get when a RAM stick has gone bad.  I stuck her sole RAM stick back in, hit the power, and here we went again:  3:4 . . . 1:4 . . . etc. etc.  I grabbed Diarmaid’s RAM stick and shoved it into Gráinne as a test, since I knew his hardware to be good.  Same reaction—3:4 . . . 1:4 . . . etc. etc.

At that point, I drew the only possible conclusion:  the motherboard was so much slag.  When you strip down the system that far and it fails to register that all the memory is missing, there’s not much it can be besides the motherboard.  I phoned Auric support in Countryburg to order parts.  I think I rode the first guy I got too hard after he was silly enough to ask me if I had checked the motherboard for blown-out capacitors.  (745s do not blow out capacitors; the 270s and 280s were the ones did that).  I bit and chomped, and must have hurt his tender feelings, ’cos he put me on hold and then hung up on me.  I was a little lighter-handed with the next tech when I called back, but not very much.  I fired a ton of Empirical jargon at him in describing what I’d done, rattling off the steps for the no-POST troubleshooting tree at railway speed.  Eventually he asked, “Did you used to work for the Empire or something?” I growled back “I still do; I’m a Resolver in Auric Relationship, Circulith.”  Suddenly he was a lot more willing to listen to what I was telling him I’d done and what I wanted him to do (send me a motherboard and a processor, parts only; I doubt I’ll need the proc, but I’d rather have it than have Gráinne down for another two days if the problem isn’t the board).

After that, I pulled Ériu, Gráinne’s predecessor who was still sitting idle in the stockroom in case of just such an event, back into position and hooked her up, dropped Gráinne’s hard drive into her as a temporary second hard drive, and got the essential files—Excel and QuickBooks, mostly—moved around so the baleboosteh could work with them, instead of having to twiddle her thumbs and fret for a couple of days.  Presuming I get the parts on time, I expect I’ll be pulling out Gráinne’s guts to replace ’em Tuesday evening.

Harold Hurtion saw the carbon-black cream on the yardarm of the peewit.  Fnord.