DreamPC 2006 ready for it's grave...

My dream: youre are gone

On a sunny day (Wed, 19 Oct 2011 23:29:04 -0700 (PDT)) it happened Skybuck wrote in :

Probably cluelessness is number 0, real computer experts start counting at zero.

I have one self assembled PC here that has been running more than 10 years 24/7 with the same harddisks (Seagate), only the power supply was replaced because replacing it was cheaper than finding the bad caps in it. But this is a top notch mobo, Tyan. Graphics card was replaced too. Every PCI slot is in use.

Many [online] shops in the Netherlands sell complete systems, Norrod, Alternate, some have an online system where you can select the right components. You absolutely need a 'randaarde' (ground) on your PC, as well as your monitor, basically on anything you plug into it except for Ethernet (that is isolated), and optical audio. If you do not, then your new (next) PC will die too withing a very short time. Connect those power cables first, that makes sure everything is on the same ground, then start with the rest.

I pretty much buy off-lease Dell Optiplex systems off eBay, usually get them for $70 - $85 delivered. The Optiplex is their commercial-grade system, not the home-grade. I run them until they are so obsolete that I replace them for performance reasons. I've never had one die, and a number of them are on 24/7 for many years. Several of them get loaded up once or twice a year and taken to shows.

1. I do vacuum out heat sinks and fans on ones that seem to pick up dust.
2. If you do #1 and watch for dying fans, you avoid this.

1. I use no "surge suppressors".

2. I don't throw them, but they do get bumped on occasion, like taking to the shows.

1. I don't have much of an indoor insect problem here.

I use Linux almost exclusively, it seems to be a lot more robust against viruses, power failures and rogue programs. Occasionally it needs to run fsck to repair file system trouble after a power failure. (My desktop system, as I type this, has been up 105 days without reboot.)

Jon

If your PC is regularly getting dropped/kicked/falling over/etc, perhaps you should look for a safer location.

Insects? Seriously? How are they getting inside the case?

--
John Gordon                   A is for Amy, who fell down the stairs
gordon@panix.com              B is for Basil, assaulted by bears
                                -- Edward Gorey, "The Gashlycrumb Tinies"

You've got it wrong. The insects are not inside the case, they're buzzing round inside his head.

--

Krypsis

And are desperate to escape. :(

--
You can't have a sense of humor, if you have no sense.

I am not yet ready to give up on my DreamPC2006 (updates along the years), mostly because I don't really believe in other systems from HP,Dell,Media Markt, Apple and so forth... For example they sell desktops/midtowers too mostly so that changes little, also I am not yet sure what the exact cause of death is of the harddisks and other equipment. So far my DreamPC2006 is still alive and working quite well from Knoppix DVD which is quite amazing... just browsing the internet does not seem to need a harddisk a nice lesson for Microsoft/IE to learn ! ;)

Sigh... so anyway I am going to make a list of most likely possible causes of death for all failed hardware components to make up my mind later:

Motherboard 1 dead/fried, cause: overheat, obstructed airflow, bad chieftec case, two gtx 7900 sandwhiched with soundblaster. (mb replacement?) (1400 bucks wasted on gtx's) (200 bucks wasted on chieftec case) Motherboard 2 dead/fried, cause: overheat, obstructed airflow, antec

1200 case dust filters preventing airflow, gtx heatsink full with dust. (200 bucks) Motherboard 3 dead, cause: electric shock, not earthed, connecting devices caused shock. (100 bucks) Memory chip bit corrupted, cause: overheat, scythe zipang obstructing airflow, heatpipes causing overheat of memory chip. (almost free replacement, 8 bucks shipping or so) Blue led on case, dead ?, cause: unexplained, perhaps faulty connecting, perhaps electric shock related. AMD Heatsink fan pins/holes broke off, still usuable, cleaning related, dust related. Old harddisk 1 (2006), bad sectors/file system corruption, vibration/ physical shock related ?!

Hmmm...

I just realized something, those guys running those data centers were way ahead of their time.

I think I am going to adept to their method of operating and it makes sense I just thought about it, here is there system/method from what I can remember, I shall dive into my report later on to see more details, but there method from what I can remember was basically this:

Three systems are needed for reliable operating:

1. A test system, to test hardware and software changes.
2. A production system.
3. A backup system.

When you think about it it makes sense, two systems are simply not enough, because testing should not be done on the production system which should be reliable, if a test fails the production system is fokked, and the backup system might be a bit old, and the production system goes down.

They probably had even a fourth system, which was a duplication of the production system, to more easily do maintaince and switch easily, I shall consult my report to see what the hell they were doing, but this idea of "tripple redundancy" is kinda interesting:

1. Use test system to test new software and new patches.
2. Incoorporate those into production system if ok.
3. Make regular backup of production system to backup system.

This way if any system fails, it's not a problem, and use other systems to get backup quickly.

So maybe it's better if I buy 3 cheap PC's and apply extra work and time, just to make sure I always have a reliable system to work and test out... but if all die rapidly after each other then that's bit of a shit.

I see one little "problem/expense" with this idea: having to have 3 hardware systems, while that's nice it also seems a bit excessive but then again not really...

Where my pain is mostly feld is with software system... setting up software systems requires a lot of time... many months really.

Though selecting hardware can also take one or two months.

Also software systems go lost forever, and hardware systems are not produced anymore.

But software systems can be saved by virtualization and if preserved properly could last a long time.

So perhaps a single computer with three harddisks might do... but not really if memory corruption happens.

So perhaps 3 seperate PC's still best, but then how to know if all 3 hardware systems are working properly ?!? This does require some more testing ! LOL ;) :)

All in all not a too bad idea, but if all three systems on my table and I smacked my table, all three could have bad sectors.

Oh by the way... Knoppix has something interesting, it has a tool which can read "SMART" info from harddisk.

It can show how many bad sectors there are... and it did show that one of the 2 TB drives had 300+ bad sectors.

I wonder about the other two disconnected drives, so I will connect those and use Knoppix to look at those drives, that will be most interesting to see if one or both of them bad too... most interesting ! ;)

I do wonder if perhaps smart data could be wrong though because of motherboard/bios bugs but perhaps not ?!?

Perhaps "three seperate tables too" !

Anyway these data centers had 3 bunkers seperated across the land ! ;) =D (

Hmm that's funny they had 5 systems: 2 for production, 1 for development, 1 for installation, 1 for acceptance.

Each system had it's own virtualization stuff on it, so these seem to be 5 different hardware systems ?! hmm... ;)

Oh well,

I kinda like my "tripple redundancy" idea/system :) it should be enough.

Bye, Skybuck.

them

replace

them

That is pretty good uptime. I have done as much or more. I think my one time best was over 250 days. No records so it is just a claim that i think i have had a system this long. Recently i have had trouble getting past 60 days. Electric service disruptions, what are you going to do?

?-)

Thank god,

The soundblaster is alive and well.

My DreamPC is one bad fighting machine !

It's fighting against it's own DEATH !

It has resurrected itself !

I connected all 4 harddisks, I also ran some Microsoft Repair tool from the harddisk itself.

It mentioned it did not ran completely successfull it mentioned it did not find a boot manager, it mentioned an OSFailOver or something.

I send the report data to Microsoft for further improvement.

Today I boot the computer and I forgot to press F11 to boot from Knoppix DVD... and amazingly Windows 7 came back alive !

Apperently enough bad sectors have been repaired so it can now function properly.

It's pretty damn amazing.

However I have experiences with machine deaths lol... and I know it could be a fluke of luck ! ;) =D

So I am enjoying my music to the max at the moment ! LOL.

Me so happy that the soundblaster still alive and kicking ! ;) =D

I am also convinced Hitachi harddisks are pretty good, they managed to recover from death ! ;) =D

The first thing I am going to do now that my Windows 7 has come back alive is to burn more Linux Distro so I can enjoy my Creative X-Fi Elite Pro 7.1 Soundblaster from Linux Distro's like Ubuntu and Linux Mint. (both debian based.)

After having used Knoppix 6.7.1 for a few days I am now convinced that Linux is pretty usuable, stable and has valuable tools which I don't know if Window's world has an equivalent.

For example Linux has "disk management tool" which can read "S.M.A.R.T." data from harddisks... I would not be surprised if there are perhaps windows tools which can do this, so I will have to google that sometime.

However the nice thing about Linux Distro is I don't have to search and find it... it's already there... However by burning a couple of Linux Distro's to DVD you can't go wrong.

I think "LIVE CD's and DVD's is the best way for Linux to make inroads into Windows world and try to lure away windows users". At least people can run Linux from DVD and don't have to worry about it.

Maybe I will even install linux on a harddisk, but with Live DVD's there might be no need to do that and simply continue using DVD's. So Linux could be a second-hand/second-option operating system and I am perfectly fine with that ! ;) =D

I also tell you the reason why I am going to burn more Linux Distro from Windows 7 now that it has come back alive:

I CANNOT BURN DISTROS from KNOPPIX ?!? (Because knoppix probably needs the DVD to remain inside... and I only have one DVD drive).

Perhaps running a virtual machine inside knoppix might make burning possible but I don't count on that ! ;) =D

Today is a happy day ! I do feel my Dad felt sorry for me and shine some light from heaven on me and make my computer work again ! LOL.

Bye, Skybuck =D

The cause of this near death of the system (harddisk failing/bad sectors) is probably:

Physical shocks.

Probably caused when I opened and closed the doors of the antec 1200 case while the computer was running.

Especially closing the door leads to a little physical shock, to jam it shut.

Other possible causes: bumping the table, or perhaps speaker vibrations, speaker on tables.

I will have to be a bit more carefull in the future ! ;)

Bye, Skybuck.

Some more interesting reports and possible conclusions.

Yesterday the DreamPC was on for a long time running Linux Mint 11, suddenly I started hearing this ticking sound.

Tick, Tick, Tick, Tick, Tick.

Apperently it was coming from the DreamPC.

I suspect one of the harddisk heads was hitting the platter repeatedly over and over and over again.

I decided to turn off the system.

Today I turn on the system and immediatly boot into Linux Mint 11 also because yesterday Windows did not want to boot because of boot manager/disk problems/bad sectors ? Which was kinda weird. Linux Mint 11 yesterday had some trouble starting because of bad sectors it seems but ultimately managed to boot from dvd.

I was surprised that today Linux Mint 11 booted up just fine and I was also surprised that the harddisks are working again.

Even Windows 7 came back alive surprisingly which is what I am using now.

I also checked the bad sectors on the Windows 7 System drive which is one of the new 2 TB hitachi drives.

The drive now has 366 bad sectors, which is reported by Linux Mint 11 as "some bad sectors".

The number of bad sectors seems to have increased I think... probably caused by the ticking yesterday.

The ticking is gone today, the ticking yesterday occured very suddenly, therefore I shall have to come to the following conclusion:

The cause of the ticking could be:

Micro vibrations and resonance.

So my hypothesis is now the following:

The spinning of the harddisk bay fans cause micro vibrations, if these micro vibrations somehow match the frequency of the material of the harddisk head then the harddisk head starts to vibrate/resonante, like that famous bridge which ultimately collapsed because of wind and resonance.

I also tried to cause more damage to the remaining harddisk by bumping my table a couple of times and rocking it back and forth a little bit, the monitor rocked a bit back and forth but the PC not... probably too heavy...

I also checked with Linux Mint 11 and the other two harddisks which were undamaged remain undamaged, so bumping the table does not lead to damage or bad sectors, at least not immediatly.

I also thought about smacking the horn of the phone on it and maybe that caused damage when I was angry once, but that seems to be impossible as well.

Rocking back and forth my table wasn't too smart, the table is a bit shacky as well, fortunately no damage occured.

I am starting to believe the "micro vibration and resonance" hypothesis and therefore I have secured my remaining harddisks, by attaching the 24 harddisk bay screws to the drive bays.

I am now also starting to believe that Antec company must have known about the need for 24 screws, they must have known this is necessary to provide the harddisk with some more stability.

The advice of somebody else on usenet to leave only a few screws attached or none at all appears to have been foolish, at least assuming this is cause of damage, which starts to become more believable.

I also notice the bottom harddisk bay has slightly more vibrations, this can be explained by two factors:

1. The power fan is on the bottom.

1. The bottom tray contains two harddisks.

The other two middle and top bays are nearly vibrationless now that the screws have been attached.

So without screws there was some vibration feeling by fingers touching it.

With screws the vibration is nearly gone.

This was felt/measured at low fan speed.

Since filters are gone I keep fans at low fan speed to prevent hairs from being sucked in, this seems smart setting to use at least for my much lower heat graphics card.

Perhaps my system could now take much more heatfull graphics cards, but I dare not risk it and the graphics card would get full with dust anyway and then overheat motherboard again so I am not going to do that.

I also wonder if perhaps electrical issue might still be cause of some strange behaviours, but for now it's probably the vibrations and bad sectors which caused some weird stuff to happen.

I shall now enjoy my computer a bit more... and hopefully soon I will be able to buy some new harddisks. It's could to try and figure out what cause of death was to try and prevent it in future otherwise it would be useless to buy new stuff.

For now I am still a bit skeptical though ;) So I will run my system some more to see if the ticking returns ;)

I have one more good idea, I shall now place the speakers on the ground instead of the table, perhaps the gaming I did also contributed to damage/bad sectors/vibrations.

Perhaps I should test that theory by blasting some sound from speakers, but I don't feel that test is worth... I might as well place speakers on ground unless perhaps I can then enjoy music and sound less, but that is something I am going to try it probably won't matter that much so the speakers are going on the floor for now... It's a bit dirty there but so what ;)

Bye, Skybuck.

Wow, placing the front speakers from the table on the ground has a very interesting effect, it makes the sound volumes coming from all speakers much more equal, which makes the surround sound effect much more noticeable.

I guess the wooden table was acting as one gigantic speaker and was somewhat distorting the surround sound effect ! ;) =D

Now with the new setup it's pretty cool, there also more room on the ground to spread the front left and front right speaker more apart for more surround sound effect.

I can now actually hear the side left, side right and rear right and rear left speakers kicking in ! ;) =D

I also tested call of duty 5 world at war when the speakers where still on the table and there was indeed some slight vibrations coming from the "kaboom" power ups... so it's probably better to place the speakers on the ground anyway.

The less vibrations on the table the better me thinks ! ;) =D

As somebody else would say: "I am now a completely anti-vibration-nazi" ! ;) =D LOL.

or: "Vibrationless nazi" ! ;) =D

Bye, Skybuck =D

P.S.: Vibrations is best kept for some female devices ! LOL.

I do wonder if I perhaps set the volume of the rear speakers slightly higher in the receiver, so I'll have to check that sometime to see if that's indeed the case or not...

It would be nice if I can see that on the digital display of the receiver otherwise I will have to connect monitor to it again and then requirings moving the monitor a little bit again which I would rather not do ;)

I shall have to consult receiver manually to see if it's possible to display speaker volumes on the receiver's display ! ;)

Bye, Skybuck :)

Oh well, now that the speaker setup is pretty much different I should probably re-do the audesy auto detection range testing and stuff like that... pretty cool.

So attaching the monitor is probably best to do all this stuff so me gonna do that to see what happens and such, me want top surround sound quality ! ;) =D

This also requires attaching the mic again ;)

(I also did re-assignment of speaker, apperently left speaker was subwoofer again which is a bit strange, maybe linux has something to do with that or so)

Bye, Skybuck.

You're an idiot.

You're an idiot.

Wow, I just cut my ring ringer finger on my right hand pretty deeply trying to find a cable in a box, there was also a motherboard i/o bracket in there which has razor sharp edges.

You electronics people are pretty crazy creating such sharp edges, I could have cut my entire rist/hand open if I grabbed more deeply.

I am going to put that bracket away in a close somewhere or maybe I should even dispose of it it's fricking dangerous.

But for now it goes into a close where it will hopefully not cut me in the future anymore.

My finger is bleeding pretty badly, I hope a bandage will be enough to stop the bleeding otherwise I might actually need surgery for the first time in my life...

I am gonna make new bandage and put it a bit more tight... gjez, first bandage already badly blooded...

Bye, Skyblood.