death of a crappy system

[Guest]

Here in the lab I help run, our admin system just up and died a painful and firey death. The 1.3 GHz Athlon gave out, brining the class I was trying to teach to a screeching halt. Not a very impressive thing to do before a bunch of people trying to learn the fundamentals of e-mail and the like. Nothing really sends that fear-factor into computer newbies than watching a system up and die.

Not so ironically, all the P3 and P4 systems are doing great, rocking along with a swiftness that the attendees have come to expect.

But at least I no longer have to worry about wether or not the Athlon will die, since it just did.

 

[lhgpoobaa]

well what happened?
details would be appreciated

Excuse me for a moment. I need to drive my ergonomic wheely chair over a sheet of bubble wrap!

 

[digital_trucker]

Sounds like the monkeys-erm, YOUNG LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, (pardon me) were up to some hijinks behind the good profs back and knocked the HSF loose.

Yippeekiiaayyy yippeekiioohhh Ghost rabbits in the sky.

 

[Guest]

most of the students are middle-aged and older, with very little computer experience. They've mostly either bought a new system or have been given one so that they can use the internet to keep in better contact with other famliy members. I highly doubt any of them had any dubious intentions.

The system in question had been a pain since the day we got it. Ironically, we got an almost identical (as far as it could be) system with a 1.5GHz P4 system, and it is still humming along just fine. Both systems were purchased direct from IBM by our corporate office (I cannot name the company I work for, as many are unable to do so). Same video, same ram, same drives, same everything that can be the same. Quite simply, the AMD system sucked rocks from day one. Crashed a lot, random errors, applications dying at random... fun stuff like that. I don't exactly have time to troubleshoot that kind of stuff in the middle of a class on "Intermediate MS Word 2000", you know what I mean?

 

[lhgpoobaa]

thats very unfortunate...
my athlon is as stable as a rock.
course my is NOT an OEM system.

dislike prebuilt ones... of any kind. so hard to service or upgrade... or troubleshoot for that matter.

my bet is that they did a crap job of putting the heatsink on in the first place... thus all your problems and the final death.


Excuse me for a moment. I need to drive my ergonomic wheely chair over a sheet of bubble wrap!

 

[Intel_inside]

yeah I guesse maybe his OEM only has problems with setting up amd systems and not intel ones. It's too bad, an amd system would have been impressive being used in a REAL academic setting and not being overclocked to death to play quake3 faster. I guesse maybe it's just not cut out for productive use yet.

AMD = Anger Management Disorder

 

[digital_trucker]

Forgive me, I wasn't accusing anyone of misdeeds. I had normal roughhousing in mind! (just kiddin' anyway) Actually, all else being identical, it sounds to me like it was simply a case of a faulty component in there somewhere. Possibly the heatsink fan wasn't working properly, causing the Athlon to overheat. As I'm sure you know, Athlons don't have any built-in thermal protection as do the Pentiums. With proper cooling though, There shouldn't be any problems. I'm using a 1.2 Athlon now and the poor thing gets seriously physically abused. The problems I've had have been related to defects in other components such as PCI cards and so forth. A dud is always a possibility.

Yippeekiiaayyy yippeekiioohhh Ghost rabbits in the sky.

 

[Kelledin]

As far as <A HREF="http://www.ohiou.edu/" target="_new">Ohio University</A> (your university) is concerned, you (Jeffry Filburn) apparently don't exist. Not as a teacher, student, employee, or anything.

<A HREF="http://www.ohiou.edu/lookup/index.html" target="_new">Check for yourself...</A>

Kelledin
<A HREF="http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/" target="_new">LFS</A>: "You don't eat or sleep or mow the lawn; you just hack your distro all day long."

 

[Intel_inside]

lol! here we go. Kelledin, why were you looking up his name at ohio university? were you trying to get an email address or maybe a phone number? Maybe the guy is smart and didn't post his real name here. Run along little troll....

AMD = Anger Management Disorder

 

[Kelledin]

Maybe the guy is smart and didn't post his real name here.

Or maybe he <A HREF="http://kelledin.tripod.com/filburn.jpg" target="_new">did.</A>

This is called a <b>background check,</b> little troll. I did it because the post sounded suspiciously similar to the initial post(s) of a certain one or two Intel zealots who shall remain nameless.

(Sorry if tripod bitches at you for this one, people...I just don't care enough to get a better file dumping ground. Those of you with Linux experience might identify the browser as Konqueror.)

Kelledin
<A HREF="http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/" target="_new">LFS</A>: "You don't eat or sleep or mow the lawn; you just hack your distro all day long."

P.S. You weren't any smarter when you originally registered your handle, remember?

 

[Intel_inside]

yeah I unfortunenatly led a few rampaging amd zealots to some poor guy's webpage

AMD = Anger Management Disorder

 

[tlaughrey]

Without doing testing to find the source of the problem, I don't think you can come to any conclusions about why that system failed. You imply that it had something to do with it having an AMD processor, but I don't think you can say for sure what was going on. I do like the little editorial touches, though ...

Not so ironically, all the P3 and P4 systems are doing great, rocking along with a swiftness that the attendees have come to expect.

Ironically, we got an almost identical (as far as it could be) system with a 1.5GHz P4 system, and it is still humming along just fine.

Nope, no bias here ...

<i>Real knowledge is to know the extent of one's ignorance.</i>

 

[Kelledin]

And that guy just happened to have a personal comment about a "troll project" he was trying on these boards? :tongue:

Just some poor guy, ja...

Kelledin
<A HREF="http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/" target="_new">LFS</A>: "You don't eat or sleep or mow the lawn; you just hack your distro all day long."

 

[Era]

Yes you are a rather poor guy.Aren't you.

 

[Guest]

well, my friend, it is people like you that really make the readers of various web-boards look really sad. For one, I do not work at OU, I did attend OU, but that was a while ago. And I indeed did NOT use my real name, with the exception of my first name. And the last name I used is just a play on my actual last name. Why you feel the need to debunk my post is quite beyond me.

I was merely sharing my experience regarding two systems, one of which is now dead. I was able to look at the heatsink this morning, and it appears fine. It may well be that the chip was just a dud, but it does not erase the fact that the Intel system is still running fine, and I will now be using it for the class I teach today (the joys of Beginning Office 2000).

 

[Guest]

I didn't mean for there to be any sort of "bias"... just an observation as to the state of the systems I have to use in the classroom. I happen to have a perfectly fine K6-2 500 system at home that I built a while ago, and it is fine. Perhaps I've just had too many bad experiences with Athlon systems. When they run fine, they are an excellent proc. But the system I was talking about in the original post here was never a good system. And now I don't have to worry about it, because its dead, and I am not responsible for having it fixed or replaced. That's why I'm an instructor, and not in the corporate office.

Again, it may well be that this system was indeed just a dud from the beginning. There are no apparent signs of heat death, and the other components seem to be fine.

 

[Matisaro]

Intel_inside, I would appreciate if you stopped using my lines. Because if you taint them with your air of stupidity I can never use them in good concience again.

Run along now.

"The Cash Left In My Pocket,The BEST Benchmark"
No Overclock+stock hsf=GOOD!

 

[digital_trucker]

Ermmmm, if there are no apparent signs of heat death, why did you say it died a "fiery death"?

Yippeekiiaayyy yippeekiioohhh Ghost rabbits in the sky.

 

[Guest]

oh, sorry about that: more of a color comment - kind of like I envisioned the sysetm burning somewhere in hell for performing so poorly. Kind of like the term "crash and burn"... it definitely crashed, and never rebooted again. MB is fine, proc is dead. They came and took it away over lunch, so I can't look into anymore. I now wait to see what it will be replaced with.

 

[digital_trucker]

I understand. Well, I certainly am NO kind of computer expert or anything, but it seems to me that whatever the problem was, it most likely wasn't related to the CPU. Kepp us updated if you find out what went wrong! I'm curious to find out!

Yippeekiiaayyy yippeekiioohhh Ghost rabbits in the sky.

 

[Guest]

I'll call the corp IT guy (he's a friend of mine), and see if he's got an extra proc he can pop into the system. We might be sending it back to IBM if its still covered by the warranty (which I think it should be). I'll try to give an update one way or another later tonight (11-28-01).

 

[Era]

death of a crappy system
Here in the lab I help run, our admin system just up and died a painful and firey death. The 1.3 GHz Athlon gave out
------------------------------------------
I didn't mean for there to be any sort of "bias"... just an observation as to the state of the systems I have to use in the classroom.

Yea shure.No bias at all.

Well,my friend,the way you write makes me think you just another pathetic lackey and an instructor of nothing.

 

[Kelledin]

If you are who you say you are, my apologies. I still have my doubts.

In case you haven't noticed, we get a lot of pure falsehood from Intel zealots here. Posts like <A HREF="http://forumz.tomshardware.com/modules.php?name=Forums&file=faq&notfound=1&code=1" target="_new">this</A> have made us very suspicious of anecdotes that seem too "convenient." Your account is at the very least obviously biased towards Intel; at the worst it's an extremely unlikely scenario.

Kelledin
<A HREF="http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/" target="_new">LFS</A>: "You don't eat or sleep or mow the lawn; you just hack your distro all day long."

 

[Guest]

well then, I thank you for your highly insightful and intelligent compliments.

Why you even bothered to post this inflammatory nonsense is really quite beyond me. If you don't like what I had to say, I'm just not quite sure how to respond. Perhaps the truth hurts? Either way, the system is dead, and I hope to know a bit more by the end of the day.

 

[Intel_inside]

well you could always use the system if you have a "how to fix broken computers" class

Run along now little amd zealot, you're not wanted here...