[gentoo-user] Re: spontaneous reboots.. what to look for

[Harry Putnam]

Mark Knecht <markknecht@×××××.com> writes:

> Reseat memory and PCI cards, etc. Consider removing for a period of
> time any hardware not absolutely necessary to debug the problem. (I.e.
> - second video card, extra disk drives, extra network adapters, etc.)
> Run memtest86 for a few days if you can spare the machine. Run
> spinrite, etc., to look for drive problems. Open the box up and place
> a fan blowing extra air for additional cooling.

That all sound fairly drastic... wouldn't any or all of those problems
leave some kind of track?  Something I can look for short of tearing
up the whole machine?

I have had the experience of breaking something in the hardware by
handling it when I really didn't need to.  An expensive video card I
had ( a few yrs ago) comes to mind  The fit was so close that dicking
around with it I broke off a small piece with some bit of circuitry in
it.

Of course I had problems with getting a viewable screen so ended up
soldering it back in... (the piece, not card to pci slot.. hehe) That
fell apart again in the same place later on and I ended up using a
piece of bailing wire to wire it in place.

Surprisingly it worked for a long time that way.

Another time... I took my wifes' computer apart (bad idea), ostensibly
adding memory and somehow broke one of the clamps holding the heatsink and
fan onto the cpu.  It could flop around quite a bit... but it actually
worked like that. 

Eventually I wired it down too...  Lasted a year or so.

But in both cases it was quite a bit of grief.

Before I retired.. I was a field construction boilermaker (weldor and
rigger).   For most of my time in that trade, anything less than 1/2"
steel plate was viewed as sheet metal.. Most of the work was 1" and up.

I didn't develop a nice light touch .. needless to say.